Probably the Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), also known as phenylthiourea (PTU).
This is a defense against “predation” by the plant. Some people find it bitter, but others do not taste it, possibly as a counter-adaptation.
Although I don’t see where the cooking would come into it, unless it deactivates something that was masking the effect.
Do you know if you’re a PTU non-taster or not? You were likely tested at some point in school - it’s a common demonstration in biology. Put a slip of paper like litmus paper on your tongue and some of the class makes a face :dubious: :eek:
You know what’s the real joke about Kohlrabi? The joke lays in the notion that I was joking when I wrote that I thought Kohlrabi was a medieval Jewish Talmudic scholar/philosopher.
When, in fact, the reality is that I wasn’t joking! For much of my life, I had only occasionally heard the word, and never picked up on the association that it’s just a vegetable, and I just thought the word sounded like it just had to be the name of a medieval Jewish scholar! Yes, I really spent much of my life thinking that (on the infrequent occasion that I thought about it at all). It was only about 10 years ago that I first noticed that kohlrabi is (wait for it . . . ) a vegetable.
EdwinAmi writes : “Plants are like The Think from the Stephen King book movie, you know, the one with Kurt Russel.”
This move was not based on a Stephen King boook, but on a short story by the late John W. Campbell, titled “Who Goes There?” It’s far scarier than any of the movies based on it.
