A peppery, white-and-purple root vegetable common in Northern European cooking — predating potatoes as a staple, with leaves (turnip greens) eaten as a separate vegetable across the American South.
A pre-potato staple
Before the potato reached Europe in the 16th century, turnips were the dominant root staple of much of Northern Europe — durable, calorie-providing, edible cooked or raw. They fed peasants, soldiers, and urban poor for centuries before the potato displaced them.
Turnips have remained important in cuisines that still favor them: Eastern European borscht, Welsh and Scottish stews, English mash, French slow-braises.
Two crops in one plant
Like several brassicas, turnips give two distinct vegetables:
- Roots — stored, peeled, cooked.
- Turnip greens — the leafy tops, cooked like collards or kale. Especially central to Southern U.S. cooking, where “turnip greens” with smoked pork are a soul-food staple. The bitter, peppery leaves are full of vitamin K and calcium.
A separate cultivar, broccoli rabe (rapini), is technically a turnip variety bred for the leafy stems and flower buds rather than the root.
Halloween’s original lantern
The original jack-o’-lanterns in Ireland and Scotland were carved from turnips, not pumpkins. Irish immigrants to North America discovered pumpkins were larger and easier to carve — the tradition transferred. Old-style turnip jack-o’-lanterns still appear at Celtic-tradition festivals.
The young Hakurei
The Japanese Hakurei turnip — small, sweet, white, eaten raw — is a relatively recent culinary discovery in Western markets. It bears little resemblance to the woody peppery storage turnip; it’s more like a sweet radish, sliceable raw and added to salads.
Find more vegetables by letter
Turnip starts with T and ends with P. Browse other vegetables along the same letter.
Vegetables that contain a letter from "Turnip":