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Burns Night vegetable dilemma
January 25th, 2010
Are ‘neeps’ swedes or turnips?
I have no idea. I only live here.
test Filed under food | Tags: Burns Night | Comments (8)8 Responses to “Burns Night vegetable dilemma”
Swede
Always thought they were parsnips meself – as in ‘pars-neeps’. I would, therefore, have wrongly suggested ‘tur-neeps’, given your multiple choice question.
Japes’ one word answer sounds so very confident tho, so I would go with that if I were you.
Happy Burns Night, by the way.
Swede. Aparently ‘neeps’ is short for Sweedish Turnips, AKA Swede.
I had swede if that helps…
Swede, but you’ll probably find them called Turnips (hence neeps) in the shops.
Apparently they always used to have to change the labels on vegetable boxes as trains passed through York (sounds slightly apocryphal!). Southern swedes are Northern Turnips and vice versa.
Mr F and I have a recurring argument about this, he being from North Yorkshire while I am from the Midlands. As far as he is concerned, turnips are bigger than swedes, while I would argue the opposite.
So, for neeps, if you have a swede and a turnip there, use the bigger one, whatever you call it.
Never really bothered to find out as I don’t like swede, turnip or parsnip. (Well, parsnip is ok, I s’pose).
Do post the definitive answer – we may need to know for some obscure tie-breaker in a pub quiz! What were the real Scots eating?
Swede. Parsnip would be yuk. Us real Scots here didn’t have haggis since our canteen saw fit to serve food representing Australia today, but not Burns’ Night yesterday. There was almost a riot.
The only Burns Night I ever attended we had what I would call swede (the big orange one as opposed to Baldrick’s favourite vegetable), so I was confused as I had always assumed ‘neeps’ were ‘turneeps’. But then I’ve had the “this is a turnip” “no THIS is a turnip” conversation more than once up here, hence I recognised the confusion in the article. Thanks for the comments!