IT is hardly a vegetable that inspires enthusiasm, let alone merits a place on the Christmas menu. Yet beetroot is making a comeback.

Whether from the crinkle cut old school, or served in a redcurrant jelly for the more discerning palate, the red root is enjoying a revival in the run-up to Christmas.

Baxters, purveyor of Britain's best known beetroot brand, which produces a third of the UK's supply, reported a 15.6% rise in sales compared with a market increase of just 2.4%.

Jen Ash, Baxters' spokeswoman, said: ''This time of year is traditionally when pickle sales peak, but beetroot has massively outperformed the market this year. We were expecting growth as people stock up their jars for the festive season, but this has been exceptional. We have no idea what's triggering demand.''

Whatever the reasons, the image change from an unloved vegetable, which most people remember haemorrhaging over school dinners, to underrated delicacy is one that producers are keen to encourage.

One Baxters supplier has already produced 1400 tonnes this season. The family-owned Dipple farm in Moray has doubled its yield since it began growing the crop five years ago, and after this year's bumper crop it has exceeded its contractual amount by almost two tonnes.

''It is certainly up this year,'' said Iain Brown of Dipple farm. ''We started with 35 acres, last year we grew 55, and this year it's up to 70 acres.'' Beetroot, he added, had outstripped wheat, barley, and livestock as Dipple farm's main moneymaker.

But what has fuelled demand for a vegetable that has for so long been relegated to the back of the cupboard?

Some point to a growing awareness of the vegetable's nutritional value - it is rich in iron, potassium, and possibly anti-cancer agents. Others say its renewed popularity stems from the attention of top restaurateurs.

But according to Rob Haward, horticultural manager of the Soil Association, it is the public's insatiable appetite for cookery programmes that is behind the rebirth of the beet generation.

''Beetroot has probably become fashionable again largely from its use by celebrity chefs. Cookery programmes are now showing people how to use it in fresh and tasty ways and that is having an influence in the supermarket,'' he said.

''Vegetables and food are like clothes in that there are fashions of consumption - it goes in cycles. Like cabbages, beetroot is historically regarded as tasteless, something you left in school dinners. But now new life has been breathed into it.''

While recent imports, such as kohlrabi and pak choi - exotic cousins to the cabbage - have taken British farming to glamorous new highs, the beetroot boom proves there is still life in an old favourite.

Mr Haward said that British cooking was becoming more inventive, adding: ''What the popularity of these crops represent is broadening tastes of the public who are far better travelled nowadays. Also, in the aftermath of foot-and-mouth, people have started to realise the importance of buying local produce.''

For Clarissa Dickson-Wright, the television cook, beetroot has never been out of favour.

She said: ''I've always said how much I love beetroot, its taste, its colour, and how it is such a pity it wasn't fashionable.

''It's from the same family as sugar beet, so you can use it for a pudding. I made it with sugar, honey, added some sultanas and orange rind, and it blew everyone away. Or you can cook it in the microwave to save time. It's a difficult vegetable to ruin.''

So, forget the sprouts and roast potatoes - for those in a pickle over Christmas dinner, the humble beetroot could be the answer.

Back to its roots

Beetroot is believed to have aphrodisiac qualities. It is thought to be high in the mineral boron, which influences the production of sex hormones, and suggestive wall paintings of the vegetable were found in the ruins of Pompeii.

Its reputation gave it high status in the classical world, with seeds and other traces recovered from the Italian city destroyed by Vesuvius in AD79.

The ''red wine'' portrayed in murals in the city's buried brothels is now thought to have been beetroot juice.

The ancient Greeks also ate its leaves and treasured the root for its medicinal qualities, but it was the Romans who cultivated it.

Many varieties have evolved and come in all shapes, sizes, and colours, from deep purple to purple-pink to white.

Widely used in Britain in the Middle Ages, its red flesh was thought to purify the blood.

British recipes for ''crimson biscuits of red beet-root'' have been dated to the eighteenth century.