Memories of eating yennets

From: Martyn Gamble, Easingwold.

IN reply to Peter Hyde (The Yorkshire Post, June 27), I also remember digging for and eating yennets.

With a couple of friends, I would walk from our village (Wombleton) across the field to Nawton Station where a new building had been built as a sugar storage facility during wartime.

All the excavated soil was an ideal yennet place.

Unfortunately, we did not have a handy stream, so had to clean them as best we could. Those were the days of youth.

From: Alan Botterill, Ravine Hill, Filey.

I HAVE not heard the term yennet, but the plant that seems to fit the description of the yennet is the “pignut”.

It is commonly found in old permanent pasture, e.g. unploughed ground such as adjoining the cliffs at Filey.

It has a white flower, is 6-9in tall, and grows from a small bulb/ tuber. It flowers in May and has a flower structure similar to cow parsley but is much smaller.

From: John Ward, Warkworth, Northumberland.

I WAS finding and eating yennets in Ryedale in the 1950s. We dug them up, brushed them off, and ate them raw. I can still remember the distinctive taste.

The yennet brings back memories of how life was lived as a youngster in those days. Nothing unusual to be away from home from breakfast time until teatime. We collected and ate lots of produce from the countryside.

From: Ken Cooke, Ilkley.

WHAT Peter Hyde calls yennets are the tubers of a small plant of the carrot family called pignut (Conopodium majus). Obviously pigs like them too. They are just as he describes and are delicious when freshly scraped from the earth. As boys near Doncaster we used to eagerly seek them out – but is so long ago I can’t remember if we had a local name for them.