Back in the days when fractals where the most fashionable thing, I had heard of fractal cabbages, and seen pictures of them. However, they are typically not available in French or American stores, so I didn’t see a real one until noticing that they are very common in Swiss supermarkets. Here’s a picture of one, but I should say that pictures do not quite convey the actual feel of seeing and handling this vegetable (not to mention eating it — and it is indeed quite tasty). The diameter (of horizontal cross-sections) of the specimen displayed here is between 10 and 15 centimeters, and the height is slightly larger.
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Just to defend my country’s honor, these are sold at the farm market here in Madison…
I agree, they look beautiful and taste really good. I first had them in Grenoble.
Here is another mention of fractalic vegtables:
http://asymptotia.com/2008/02/10/a-delicious-fractal/
Thanks for the reference! (I have to admit I didn’t do any measurement of the structure of the vegetable…) Amusingly, there was none in the store where I usually buy them this morning…
I would like to know the Hausdorff dimension of this cabbage.
I think in culinary circles they go by the name “Romanesque Broccoli”. Very pleasing on the eye, the mind, and the tongue!
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[...] Joining us for lunch, we have E. Kowalski’s very accessible overview of what we have to do to get to Twin Primes .Oh yeah, lunch. To feed off the starving graduate student horde, he has also prepared fractal cabbages. [...]
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