The taste we've learned to love Print E-mail
Written by Claire Hopley, 2008   
It is hard to imagine culinary life without garlic, yet we Brits took a long time to welcome the pungent little clove back into our kitchens, says Claire Hople.

Garlic has been a cook's staple for millennia. The Chinese have used it since antiquity; the ancient Egyptians buried it with their dead; classical Greeks had a whole section of Athens' market devoted just to garlic; and it was as important in cooking for the Romans as it is to Italians today.
 
Yet if you are old enough to recall the 1960s, you'll remember a time when garlic was scarcely used in Britain. You certainly couldn't buy whole bulbs of it at the greengrocer's, and few gardeners thought of growing it. Now many contrive to cultivate a year's supply in a small back-garden plot.

The sort that grows best in Britain is the small hardneck garlic; it's not as bridal white as the bigger Mediterranean softneck garlic you buy in the supermarket, but garlic lovers generally prefer its sweetness and pungency.

So what eventually turned Britain into a nation of garlic eaters? One answer is that as more of the post-Second World War generation travelled to Spain, Greece and other Mediterranean countries, the more we fell in love with cuisines in which garlic was essential.

To make the flavourful dishes of the warm south in the cold of an English winter, we had to cosy up to garlic! Our enthusiasm for Indian food also helped.

Another answer is that, like people all over the world, we actually have a history of eating garlic that goes way back in time. One of the favourite dishes of the high tables of Norman England was goose with 'gauncil' - a white sauce flavoured with garlic and saffron.

In the late 13th century, Glastonbury Abbey used as many as 80,000 bulbs of garlic a year. Food historian Colin Spencer estimates that this equals a quarter of a small British bulb of garlic per person per day. Like the monks, poor people also appreciated garlic because it brightened up their grain-based diet.
 
Its pungency is, of course, what people love about garlic. But while it enhances the flavours of food, it can linger for hours in less-than-alluring bodily exhalations. So some time in the late Renaissance the British turned away from garlic.

Writing about salad vegetables in 1699, John Evelyn accepted the powerful health benefits of garlic, calling it "a Charm against all infection and Poyson". But while he thought it was all right for sailors or "Northern rustics" living in moist places to eat it, he absolutely forbade it in salad because of its smell. He nails home his point with the remark "To be sure, 'tis not for Ladies Pallats or those who court them."

By the 19th century, Mrs Beeton acknowledged that the French considered garlic "essential in many dishes", nonetheless, describing it as "the most acrimonious in its taste" of all the onion family. She warned: "The smell of this plant is generally considered offensive."

Chop and whiff

While its smell is the most noted quality of garlic, oddly it is not always present. Sniff a whole bulb of garlic or even unpeeled cloves, and the aroma is mild, even non-existent. Even when you peel off the papery skin, the fragrance is unaggressive. It's only when you cut the clove that it bursts through. And the more you chop it, the more boisterous it gets.

What you are smelling is the effect of allinase on alliin. Both are natural components of garlic, and they react when the inside of the garlic clove is exposed to air to form allicin, which is the garlic chemical that has the characteristic smell.

This phenomenon is crucial in garlic cookery. If you use chopped raw garlic, it will shout louder than almost any other ingredients in the dish. Mediterranean cooks have exploited this quality by creating an array of sauces or relishes whose kick is powered by uncooked garlic.

Pesto is perhaps the most famous. A paste of basil with garlic, pine nuts, Parmesan and olive oil, its flavour brightens the bland pasta that is its traditional foil. The French relative of this Italian favourite is pistou, another pairing of garlic with basil and oil.

Back in Italy, garlic also stars in gremolata, a mix of chopped parsley, chopped garlic and lemon zest sprinkled on meat dishes such as osso bucco, and in bagna cauda, a warm garlic-anchovy dip served with vegetables.

Across the Adriatic, Greeks pound garlic with mashed potatoes or soaked bread to form a smooth paste-like sauce called skordalia, traditionally served with fish, though sometimes simply offered as a one of the mezedes that precede the main dish.

But heat tames the power of garlic. So in soups, stews and sauces that are cooked for a long time, garlic simmers down into a background aroma, essential to the full flavour of the dish but not demanding the limelight.

You can even bake a whole bulb of garlic, and as long as you leave it in the oven for an hour or so, its cloves will emerge softly from their skins to make a gently aromatic spread for bread or meat.

Today, garlic has won back its old popularity in the food of Britain - and of the US too. San Francisco has a restaurant called The Stinking Rose, whose billboard proclaims: "We season our garlic with food." Garlic features as a major ingredient on every item on the menu.

Diners can begin with a garlic vodka martini, work through roasted garlic on bread, a garlic prime rib steak or garlicky iron-skillet mussels, or even garlic fondue served with garlic wine, and finally end their meal with garlic ice-cream or a garlicky cake!

Even if you would not choose to overdose on garlic in this way, scientists are confirming that our ancestors were right: garlic is good for you. The sulphur compounds that give garlic its flavour also make it antibacterial and antifungal. It can help prevent blood from clotting, too.

Whether you want therapy from your kitchen or just love the taste and flavour of garlic, the Cooking with Garlic recipes on our Recipes section are well worth trying - view them here  
 
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