82 THE BOOK OF VEGETABLES 



Boil for about eighty minutes, or until tender. Serve 

 whole, with a simple sauce in a separate dish. 



Parsnips may be cooked in any of the ways suggested 

 for cooking salsify in " The Book of Asparagus." 



Turnips 



The turnip, in common with several other vegetables, 

 seems to have been introduced into England by the 

 Flemings in the sixteenth century, though its name 

 (terrae napus) rather points to earlier Roman intro- 

 duction. In any case, the Romans highly esteemed the 

 vegetable both as food for man and as food for cattle. 

 Cato and Pliny make frequent references to the turnip, 

 and it is obvious that it was more valued than almost 

 any other vegetable grown in Rome. Long after their 

 introduction into this country, turnips were grown only 

 in gardens and market plots for human consumption, and 

 Gerard wrote : " The small turnip groweth by a village 

 near London, called Hackney, in a sandy ground, and 

 are brought to the Cross in Cheapside by the women 

 of that village to be sold, and are the best I ever tasted. 

 The bulbus or knobbed root, which is properly called 

 rapum or turnip, and hath given the name to the plant, 

 is many times eaten raw, especially by the poor people 

 in Wales, but most commonly boiled." Worlidge, how- 

 ever, said in 1 668 that turnips were being frequently 

 grown on a large scale by farmers as food for their 

 cattle. In the years 1630 and 1693, owing to the 

 failure of the corn crops, turnips were largely mixed 

 with flour in the preparation of bread. Really, however, 

 the food value of the turnip when eaten by mankind is 

 not great. 



As a moral symbol, the turnip has been considered to 

 possess significance, and Canon Ellacombe quotes from 

 Gwillim's Heraldry: "This is a wholesome root, and 



