I’ve always wondered about that name. It they do eat them for breakfast, um… how?
All I can tell you is that I was taught by European friends to make a radish sandwich for breakfast as follows:
Wash and clean some French breakfast radishes, which are milder than the red globe radishes that are more typical in the US, and slice them lengthwise, generating several flat slices per radish. Toast a piece of crusty white bread lightly. Butter the bread, then tile it with the radish slices. Sprinkle with a small amount of salt.
This is surprisingly delicious and more than the sum of its parts.
Apparently, they also dip them raw, in salted butter and eat as such. That might be why salted butter exists.
Get this, appa4ently, the French also cook and braise red radishes in dishes. Believe you me, this was shocking to me, that someone would cook radishes. I came from a fresh veg radish culture, always crunchy, peppery and fresh.
Cut the little tail and the green leaves, slice in half, eat with butter, salt, or slices of saucisson.
It’s an entrée generally.
Very helpful, y’all!
I had heard about eating them sliced on buttered bread, but never tried it. I will follow up.
Radishes now going on my shopping list. 
They’re a specific varietal of radish called French Breakfast. Longish as opposed to globular. Pretty mild.
Once I was in the Munich Hofbräuhaus. The waitresses were offering up, in addition to pretzels and liter steins of lager, big red globe radishes, with salt. Delicious. A group of Japanese tourists were watching the rest of us munch these, and of course had to try them. They gave us that look of “God, these crazy foreigners really eat that???”
I’m not French but in cold weather I sometimes make a root vegetable stew that gets anything I can find at the store, including radishes.
Thanks!
I’ve grown that specific variety for years, sell them at farmers’ market, and have occasionally commented to a purchaser that I don’t know whether people actually eat them for breakfast in France. Maybe I’ll take that recipe and add it to my market handouts.
Mine come out fairly sharp, though. I suspect the flavor may be partially dependent on the soil it’s grown in.
Cool. The Spruce Eats has a good page that might be helpful for folks:
What Are French Breakfast Radishes?.
I tried a sandwich on white farmhouse bread, ordinary grocery store radishes, and butter. Surprisingly delicious, they weren’t bitey - I should do it again! I tried roasting them with other root vegetables, but they came out like soggy little potatoes.
Thanks again!
– I note that that page says no, the French don’t eat them for breakfast; but do eat them as a snack (the recipe’s similar to your description, but alternates bites of buttered bread and radish instead of assembling them together.)
“Cherry Belle”, by the way, is also a specific variety. Sometimes I grow those too.
I do know people in France who have them for breakfast, so there’s that 
Aha!
I think I’ll take that as trumping the magazine article – especially an article which thinks “Cherry Belle” is a general type instead of a specific variety; and conclude that at least some people in France do eat them for breakfast.
I so attest!
Right-o!
Nice!
Yeah, I could have googled, but I posted in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and was feeling lonely. It’s always more fun to ask the Dope these questions than Google.
You should grow them in your garden. Radishes are probably the single easiest vegetable to grow. Almost no pests. Great disease resistance. Take up little space. And only take about a month from sowing to harvest.
I’ve seen a few online references claiming that the name came from Victorian England, where they were a popular breakfast food. I don’t know about that, but I have heard of people enjoying those kinds of radishes peeled and chilled as a side to accompany stewed beans (they break up the monotony). For now, I prefer mild peppers, olives or even pickles, because of the salt and vinegar, but will be giving radishes another try.
I can still remember a story we read in elementary school. Two siblings were thinking about Mother’s Day presents, and one was going to save his money and buy something expensive (don’t remember what it was). The other one made a garden plot in the shape of a heart and planted it with radishes timed to be ripe on Mother’s Day. I don’t know if that’s horticulturally correct (@thorny_locust ?), but the image really stuck in my mind.
We’ve been eating radishes lately. Are they in the zeitgeist now?
Would depend on where you were – and on whether the weather obligingly did more or less what you expected. But certainly possible; especially if one’s mother didn’t insist on the radishes being an exact size at harvest – I can generally harvest a radish planting over about three weeks if the weather’s suitable.
Radishes like cool and damp, and can be planted before last frost date; to get them by mid-May you’d want to plant in early April (again somewhat variety dependent, though IME they take a bit longer than it says in the seed catalog), which around here is possible in many but not all years; and certainly is usually possible a lot of places.