Where Is the Watford Gap of Turnips?

[PatsyCline]

I grew up and live in in the north of England and here a turnip is a large red-brown root vegetable with a yellow/white inside. Swedes are small, pale fellers. I know that in the south of England the names are the other way around. Now our new Tescos is carrying out some blatant vegetable imperialism by calling good northern turnips blinking swedes. Outrageous!

So that I can build what may well be the first (and I imagine the last) 'Mumsnet Turnip Map of the UK' and discover at what point on the M1 a turnip warps into a swede, please name your location and tell me what you call the "large red-brown root vegetable with a yellow/white inside". Do not let your supermarket's labelling influence you - go with your what your mother taught you.

I'm ashamed to say that this has been bothering me for years days.

Up here in Scotland, we call them turnips or neeps. They are labeled swedes here too!!

Hmm, well I'm from Cornwall, so about as far south as you can go, and for me a turnip is what the supermarket calls swede. Good in pasties!

My PILs have inherited a cup from an agricultural show in the Midlands (19th century iirc) for growing Swedish Ridged Turnips. Do I get the fence-sitters prize?

Any more turnip info? I know you're out there!

I grew up in Warrington, turnips there too.

Grew up in Merseyside, they were always turnips to us - my mum grew up in Wolverhampton, they were turnips to her as well...

I have no idea how they are labelled at the moment in the SE as I don't buy them but growing up in Essex the red bulb one was a turnip and the whitish round one was a swede (we used to carve these for Halloween before pumpkins became available)

So could it be that about 20 years ago someone at Tescos got mixed up and, as a result, our vegetable names are slowly being switched? Ah, the evils of modern consumerism!

Please keep letting me have your turnip info.

DH grew up in Middlesborough and had turnips, I grew up in Bath and had Swedes.

The plot thickens!

I grew up in Leeds. Large reddish jobs were always swedes. Small white ones always turnips. Of course, if you asked my mother, then swedes were neeps!

So far only Bath is confirmed as big = swede little = turnip. If things carry on this was I'll launch a campaign to get the labels switched back the right way round and reclaim the turnip!

Any more root vegetable opinions on a Friday night?

ahem

pointy, if you're reading this, I searched for your name and 'turnips', and there were 16 posts.

Turnip

Rutabaga

Apparently.

Calling both a turnip is not wrong, then. And nothing to do with Tesco.

some people really do have too much time on their hands

Swedes are orange. I am from London. Does that help?

I always thought that Neeps and Tatties in a Scottish sense referred (weirdly) to swedes. The BBC Food website has swede as the key ingredient in neeps & tatties.

Actually we need to ask the poster who goes by the name of Swedes2turnips1. She cares so much she's named herself after this particular conundrum.

Thanks for that link FrayedKnot, I feel slightly less sad now!

M&J, I shall hijack the next thread I see Swedes2Turnips1 on (well, unless it's truly serious) and demand that she contribute to the debate.

Thanks for all the replies. I have to stop slagging Tesco off - I picked up a turnip in Waitrose yesterday and dropped it in horror as it was labelled swede. I thought Waitrsoe was a responsible retailer?!