Swede, neep, rutabaga or turnip: one vegetable born from a cabbage-turnip cross
The rutabaga is a hybrid of cabbage and turnip that doubled its chromosomes, and it answers to a dizzying list of names: swede in England, neep or tumshie in Scotland, rwden in parts of Wales, lanttu in Finland. How bitter it tastes to you depends partly on which version of a taste gene you carry.
Rutabaga is a form of Brassica napus, the species that also includes rapeseed. That species arose when turnip, Brassica rapa, crossed with wild cabbage, Brassica oleracea, and the offspring doubled its chromosome set, ending up with 2n = 38. Woo Jang-choon published the relationship in 1935 as the Triangle of U. The North American name comes from the Swedish dialect word rotabagge, roughly root lump, while swede is short for Swedish turnip.
The Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin gave the first printed mention in 1620, noting it growing wild in Sweden. Finnish researchers conclude it was probably bred more than once in Northern Europe around the sixteenth century, arising independently in Finland and Sweden. Accounts of its arrival in England disagree, with one version bringing it from Germany around 1750; Scotland got it from Sweden around 1781, and Illinois farmers were growing it by 1817. From the early nineteenth century its roots and leaves also became winter livestock feed.
In Germany and France it came to mean hunger. During the Turnip Winter of 1916 to 1917, caused by the Allied blockade, and again from 1945 to 1949, many Germans survived on stew of rutabaga and water, leaving older generations with grim memories. Elsewhere it is beloved: Scots serve neeps and tatties with haggis at Burns suppers, Finns bake a rutabaga casserole for Christmas, Norwegians mash it for festive dishes, and it is one of the traditional fillings of the Cornish pasty.
Its bitterness comes from glucosinolates, which make up around one percent of the dry matter. People with the PAV/PAV version of a bitter-receptor gene find rutabaga twice as bitter as those with AVI/AVI, and some find it inedible. A 100 gram serving holds 25 milligrams of vitamin C. In Scotland and northern England, people have long hollowed turnips into grim-faced lanterns, set out at Halloween to keep evil spirits away.
Source: Rutabaga
