Swedes 2 Turnips 1

A cold winters day, waking up to frost all over the windscreen of the truck. An inconvenience, but frost always reminds me of Andy talking about the need to leave your turnips in the ground until the first frost – improves the flavor. The turnip is one of my favorite winter vegetables.

In England, the turnip was grown sporadically in the 1700’s mainly as animal fodder,but the invention of the seed drill by Jethro Tull* modernized agriculture and turnips were efficiently crop rotated with cereals. Consequently, the turnip was popularised.

Now, the yellow fleshed vegetable that,in the north of England, we call a turnip is called a swede in the south of England.Down south, turnips are smaller white fleshed vegetables that have a characteristically stronger flavor – in the north, logically , we call these white turnips! Turnips in Scotland are referred to as neeps (from the latin name, B. napus) and are one of the traditional accompaniments to the national dish,haggis.

Surprise upon surprise. When we came to the US we realized that turnips were called rutabaga. I had no idea why until my good friend Udo,from Germany, also a fan of this vegetable, told me that the name is Swedish in origin, where it is called rotabagge (apparently translated as red bag). Turnips originated in northern Europe before spreading wordwide – makes sense,I guess.

Now to the headline! In 1992 ,at the European championship,the English soccer team lost a critical match to Sweden by 2 goals to 1 and were eliminated from the competition. A UK tabloid came up with the historic headline Swedes 2 Turnips 1.
A bit harsh on the turnip!

The turnip is a temperate vegetable, so unlike in Andy’s allotment, I doubt I will be growing it at AndAllen.

* My favorite Jethro Tull track is ”The Teacher”