Garlic's role

Garlic is not pungent as onion, but it has its own unique collection of concentrated organic

flavor chemicals with a mighty flavor impact on food, particularly when raw or barely cooked. Cut

into, or crush fresh garlic, and the forceful enzymatic actions start at once. Or moisten dry garlic

granules and you wake up the enzyme action just as quickly.

Though prolonged cooking considerably tames garlic, a milder flavor impact remains. The

longer the cooking process, the more essential oils (that contain the principal flavor compounds)

escape into the kitchen air. If you like a strong garlic flavor, it is best to add the garlic late in the

sautéing or cooking process. Many recipes call for sautéing onion and garlic together. For more of a

garlic impact, sauté the onion first and only add the garlic during the last few minutes.

As highly-flavored dishes came into demand in American kitchens, garlic became one of

our top flavoring ingredients. From an average annual U.S. consumption of 0.4 pounds (180 g) per

person in the 1970s, garlic increased to around 2 pounds (1 kg) by the 1990s.

TASTINGS Garlic production

China leads worldwide garlic production followed by South Korea, India, Spain and

the U.S. Almost all our domestically grown garlic comes from California. The

Gilroy area south of San Francisco grows 90 percent of U.S. garlic, though that

includes some that growers ship in for processing from other nearby areas. Of the

more than 200 varieties of garlic, California only grows two—the white, early

summer and the pale pink late summer types.

The most common garlic in North American markets is the relatively mild white or silver-

skin garlic. The pale pink, also called violet, garlic has a stronger, more pungent flavor, and rose,

also called red, garlic is even stronger. The rose garlic is an Asian variety, rare in North American

markets. Elephant garlic, so named because of its huge cloves, is a very mild hybrid of garlic and

onion, perfect for people who like just a touch of garlic flavor. Elephant garlic is not often in the

market.

Garlic, while you mince it, is not nearly as strongly irritating as onion. When you rupture

garlic cells with your knife, garlic enzymes set off an entirely different sets of reactions to convert

sulfur compounds into three chemical substances—ammonia, pyruvic acid and diallyl disulfide.

Diallyl disulfide is mainly responsible for the characteristic raw garlic flavor, but heat destroys it,

that is why cooked garlic has such vastly reduced flavor impact.

What about garlic breath? When you eat raw garlic, diallyl disulfide dissolves in your blood

stream that you exhale through your lungs. With a fair amount of garlic in your system, your

perspiration also contains some diallyl sulfide. You can smell that in the air around a crowd or on a

bus in Asian countries where they cook with plenty. Spritzing breath fresheners in your mouth or

chewing on parsley won't help because garlic breath doesn't originate in your mouth. This is equally

true for onion breath.

Here are two possible remedies if garlic or onion breath concerns you. You can feed raw

garlic or onion to everyone you'll come in contact with so everyone's breath smells the same. Or use

a commercially available yeast capsule, a by-produce of wine-making. It interacts with the

offending chemicals of both garlic and onion before they get into your bloodstream. This doesn't

completely eliminate the odor but cuts it back considerably. These capsules are sometimes sold in

gourmet shops. (One such capsule is Monjay made by Bon Mangé, Inc., Davis, CA, 800 553-1224.)

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