Turnip time
Westport is known in the southeastern part of Massachusetts for its high school sports teams, but it is famous throughout the vegetable world for the Macomber turnip. Two brothers, Aiden and Elihu Macomber, returned home from the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 with European rutabaga seeds that they planted near a patch of radishes. The two Brassica cousins cross-pollinated, as plants will do, and the happy result was a new creamy white root vegetable sweeter than most now known as the Macomber turnip.
Turnips, as you know, are mostly white, purple-topped root vegetables in the grocery store we hardly ever buy. They are easy to grow in the spring and autumn, and they will keep for a couple months or more when properly stored.
Early in their history, they were all-stars in the vegetable world because they were easy to grow and hungry gardeners could eat the root and the leaves. Pliny the Elder, also known as Pliny the Rascal, considered turnips one of the more important vegetable crops for his generation, which was during the first century A.D.
During the early 18th century, Robert Walpole was Prime Minister of England, and his foreign policy collaborator was his brother-in-law Charles Townshend, known endearingly as Turnip Townshend. When he was not being Secretary of State, he had a strong interest in improving farming methods, and he advocated crop rotations using barley, clover, wheat and turnips.
Because of his innovative contributions to farming strategy, he is ranked among those who spawned the British Agricultural Revolution. That is what turnips can do for a gardener.
Important to me is whether he is an ancestor of Pete Townshend who could have created Turnip Time on the Thames but wrote Pinball Wizard instead, but that turned out okay.
Turnips, known as Brassica rapa rapa, is not as popular these days. It was standard fare in Medieval cuisines. They were more carrot-shaped then, and they sported more colors than you’d ever suspect by what we usually see in markets. White Egg and Cowhorn were early varieties. Asian varieties ranged from dark purple to green, red and snow white.
Turnips are a member of the mustard family along with radishes and rutabagas. Typical turnips are a bit larger than typical grocery store radishes and a bit smaller than typical rutabagas. Bigger than a golf ball and more nutritious. In some areas, rutabagas, a natural cross between a cabbage and a radish, are called swede turnips or simply swedes.
What we call a turnip is the swollen top of the root of the plant, and there are no side roots, only downward roots. Usually, the top part of the swollen root ball heaves above ground a bit. Around here we should plant them in early spring for a June harvest and again in late August to mid-September for another crop.
Turnips and radishes are similar enough that sometimes it is hard to tell them apart. A watermelon radish could be a turnip. Both can be softball size, but some radishes, not turnips, are mature when smaller than a golf ball. Folks generally don’t eat radish leaves, but turnip greens are a tradition in the South. We usually cook turnips but eat radishes raw. I, however, add radishes to winter soups because I’m fearless.
The real difference between them is turnip is a root vegetable and radish is a species of plants. You can debate the semantics of nomenclature, but soon enough you take both to the kitchen for the same reason.
Turnip greens are more nutritious than the root ball. The greens are full of A’s, K’s and folate, but the root balls are better for juggling and you can mash them up like potatoes at Thanksgiving.