By Joel Denker
“Stinking rose.” “Camphor of the poor.” “Truffle of Provence.” Garlic has simultaneously been admired and reviled through the centuries. At times it has been perceived as a sinister force; at other times, as life-giving and protective.
The “stinking rose” is actually a member of the lily family. Most likely native to Central Asia, from whence it traveled to the Mediterranean, garlic belongs to the Allium genus, which includes onions, chives, and leeks. Its English name derives from the joining of two Anglo-Saxon words, gar, the word for spear (an allusion to the shape of its leaves) and leac, the word for herb. Allium, garlic’s Latin name, comes from the Celtic word for hot.
The ancient plant, which bears whitish lavender flowers and whose bulb grows entirely underground, must have captivated the earliest civilizations. Since its seeds were sterile, propagating garlic required conscious human choice and effort. To cultivate the warm weather crop, farmers had to plant individual bulbs in the soil.
The builders of the Pyramids, according to Herodotus, subsisted on a diet of radishes, garlic, leeks, and onions. When their bosses cut their rations, the workers walked off the job, precipitating what garlic aficionado Lloyd Harris thinks may have been the earliest recorded strike.
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To learn more about garlic, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
