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Onions and Garlic

A Global History

Look at any recipe for a savory dish and chances are it will start with this step: fry onions in a pan over medium heat. Onions—and their allium family relatives, shallots, garlic, chives, and leeks—are one of the most heavily used ingredients in cuisines all over the world. You’ll rarely find them in the spotlight, though—except for when they are fried into rings or used to repel vampires. In this book, Martha Jay gives alliums their due, offering an illuminating history of these cherished plants that follows the trail of their aromas to every corner of the globe and from ancient times up to today.
           
Going back to the earliest recipes from ancient Mesopotamia, Jay traces the spread of alliums along trade routes through Central Asia and into ancient Greece and Rome. Likewise she follows their spread in East Asia, where they have become indispensable, and of course into Europe and the Americas, where the onion—and its odor—gave rise to the name “Chicago” and the leek became the national symbol of Wales. Celebrated, denigrated, prescribed, and proscribed, onions, garlic, and their relatives can be found—as Jay lavishly demonstrates—in the histories of peasants and kings, in cuisine and art, in tales of colonization and those of resistance, and in medicinal cures and magical potions alike. Her book is a welcome celebration of some of the most important ingredients in the world. 

144 pages | 42 color plates, 12 halftones | 5 x 7 3/4 | © 2016

Edible

Food and Gastronomy


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Reviews

Onions and Garlic comes as a short and entertaining contribution to the enterprising Edible Series. . . . Informative and detailed enough to make her points, yet without ever lingering too long, Martha Jay takes us on a cook’s tour of her topic. . . . With anecdotes and historical snippets, she tells her story well.”

Eastern Daily Press

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Ancient Allium
2. The Medieval Onion
3. Travel, Trade and Folklore
4. The Onion Improves
5. The Modern Allium

Recipes
References
Bibliography
Websites and Associations
Photo Acknowledgments
Index

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