Take baby spinach. Anyone, confronted with baby spinach, would blithely assume that they were eating infant, immature spinach, harvested in its carefree salad years before it had time to develop into serious-minded, grown-up spinach. This is, however, not true. Baby spinach is a small-sized version of conventional flat-leaf spinach. It’s not a baby. It’s a shrimpy but mature adult, the spinach equivalent of a toy poodle.

The same applies to a host of other so-called baby vegetables. Baby cucumbers, for example, are a tiny, but adult, form of seedless Persian cucumbers. Baby beets—which come in both red and gold—are adult beets that grow no larger than ping-pong balls. Baby cauliflower springs from miniature breeds whose heads —technically called curds—are just