Turnips and Rutabagas
(Brassica rapa and napobrassica, respectively)
One of the oldest cultivated foods--some 5000 years ago--turnips probably sustained early foraging peoples long before the principles of cultivation were understood. Ancient caves in China have produced evidence of prehistoric man eating raw turnips--and, later, with the harnessing of fire, eating roasted turnips. Ancient caves in France are decorated with paintings that show turnips being boiled in clay pots.
Called the "potato of ancient cuisines," turnips famously nourished the poor. One snotty society even decreed that its nobles were forbidden to eat them BECAUSE they were only good enough for the lower classes.
Greeks knew them well. Pliny, in fact, discusses long turnips, flat turnips, and round turnips, such were the number of varieties under cultivation. And in early Rome--3rd century BC Rome--the story goes that Curius Dentatus, brilliant Roman military strategist, was targeted by the Samnites, who wished to bribe him into joining their ranks against his own countrymen. Their plot was abandoned when they discovered him cooking his own meal of turnips in the ashes of a fire. Why? They knew they could not tempt a man so spartan in his diet, not for all the riches in their coffers.
Later, Roman nobility changed their mind about the humble root; they loved to dress them up and eat them, cooking them to a paste, stirring oil, honey, and vinegar into them, then dousing them with strong cumin and rue.
Then, what about Captain Frederick Marryat's comments about "There's no getting blood out of a turnip"?...