In Roman times, the turnip was the weapon of choice to hurl at unpopular public figures. In the 15th century, “turnip eater” was the common term for a country bumpkin, and in Charles Dickens’s novels, if you called someone a “turnip,” you meant that he or she was a perfect idiot.

During the Civil War, a turnip is what drove Scarlett O’Hara to shake her fist at the heavens and swear that she’d never be hungry again—the implication being that only the starving would stoop to the awful level of turnips. Unfortunately this isn’t far wrong: Turnips, throughout their long and lumpish history, have been the food of cows, pigs, sheep, the desperate, and the poor. (See “How a Food