Before the potato became ordinary, and before sugar became cheap, there was skirret. In Scotland it was known as crummock, a word recorded in Scots for the plant Sium sisarum. The Dictionaries of the Scots Language give Scottish references from the early eighteenth century, including Orkney in 1701 and an account book entry from 1703 listing “crumocks” among kitchen-garden produce. The same source notes the word in Older Scots from 1693 and connects it with Gaelic crumag. Skirret is a perennial root vegetable in the carrot family, Apiaceae. It produces clusters of long, pale, finger-like roots rather than one neat
