Salt is our number one flavor enhancer—without it we could not prepare a truly flavorful

dish. Number two has to be the various members of the onion tribe. Onion and garlic both

contribute a commanding flavor to foods. They are used in every cuisine in the world, at least to

some extent, and in most of them not just casually. People whose tradition favors bland foods—the

British and Scandinavians—use them sparingly, while highly-flavored cuisines—Latin America, the

Mediterranean, Central Europe and Asia—rely much more heavily on them. In North America, with

our predominantly British and Northern European food heritage, we also used to cook with onion

and garlic rather sparingly until the food revolution of the 1970s. Before that shift many people even

refused any dish that contained onion, and the even stronger flavor of garlic was considered close to

poisonous.

Actually, this belief is not without basis. If you grew up in a family where the cook had little

use for onion and garlic, your stomach never adapted to digesting their rather powerful ingredients,

and you can readily develop a stomach ache when eating onion and garlic-rich dishes. It is like

eating hot chilies. If you are used to them, you eat them regularly in an astonishing quantity without

ill-effect. If you are not used to them, your stomach rebels even after half a hot chili, that is, if you

can actually swallow any of it.

The Basics

All members of the onion tribe belong to the lily family, Allium. This huge family includes

such seeming strangers as the lily and asparagus and the family is distantly related to grasses, at

least to a botanist.

Introducing the tribe

The native onion plant (Allium cepa) has been traced back to the Iranian and Pakistani

regions of Asia. Over 500 different varieties of onion now grow in virtually every country in the

world, except in extreme cold climates.

Some 5000 years ago, Egyptians considered onion to possess a divine power. About 2000

years ago the ancient Greeks and Romans regularly used onion for cooking. This vegetable was the

most important flavoring agent in an otherwise very bland European diet in the Middle Ages. Today

onion and garlic still have divine power but their almighty, powerful effect is on our taste buds and

in our dishes.

Garlic (Allium sativum) also originated in Asia, probably from the southeastern part of the

Mediterranean. The Egyptians used it just as extensively as they did onion. They attributed power to

anyone who ate garlic. Roman soldiers, laborers and gladiators ate garlic before combat and work to

build up power and strength. The slaves who built the pyramids lived on onion and garlic.

Garlic differs from onion not only in flavor but the way it grows. Onion forms a single bulb

underground that shoots up a stalk which bears the seed from which the next generation of onions

grows. Garlic also grows underground bulbs, but they divide into many small bulbs, or cloves, from

which the new garlic plants grow. It also shoots up a seed stalk on top of which tiny bulbs form,

these bulbs also sprout and grow into new plants.

Some onion varieties also multiply by division of bulbs on top of the seed stalk, as garlic

does. They are edible and are called tree onions, topping onions, multiplier onions or brown

shallots, but they are not available commercially for kitchen use.

We also use three other members of this family in the kitchen—leeks, chives and shallots.

Serious Kitchen Play