48 Fun Facts About Garlic

Which of these kitchen staples is a close relative of garlic, in the same plant genus?

Shallot shares garlic's genus with onions, leeks and chives, but garlic packs by far the most of the flavour compounds the group has in common, which is why it tastes the strongest.

To which region is garlic native?

Central Asia, along with north-eastern Iran, is where garlic grows wild; around the Mediterranean it arrived as a crop and later escaped, so botanists class it there as naturalised, not native.

Which country grows roughly three-quarters of the world's garlic?

China grows roughly three-quarters of the world's garlic, far ahead of second-placed India, and its cheap exports have faced anti-dumping duties in the United States since 1994.

What is a whole bulb of garlic commonly called in the kitchen?

A head is the cook's word for the whole bulb: slice off the top, drizzle it with oil and roast it, and the cloves soften until they can be squeezed out of their skins like paste.

What triggers the sharp flavour and smell of garlic?

Damaging the plant's cells is the trigger: an enzyme kept in the vacuoles meets stored compounds only when a clove is chopped, chewed or crushed, which is why an unbroken clove has barely any smell.

Which compound is most responsible for the 'hot' sensation of raw garlic?

Allicin opens the heat-sensing channels in nerve endings, which is why raw garlic burns; it is unstable, and cooking removes it, so cooked garlic mellows.

Scientists think garlic evolved its pungent compounds mainly for what purpose?

To deter animals that eat it: the sharp chemicals put off birds, insects and worms, and garlic makes far more of them than onions or leeks do.

Why does brushing do so little for garlic breath?

It comes from the lungs: a garlic compound the body is slow to break down passes into the blood and is breathed out, and released through the skin, for hours afterwards.

According to studies, which drink neutralises garlic breath best when taken with the garlic?

Milk, drunk with the garlic rather than after it, cut the main garlic-breath compound most in a 2010 Ohio State University study; whole milk beat skimmed, so the fat-and-water mix is the key.

Why can pickled garlic turn green or blue?

Its own compounds form coloured pigments: acid lets garlic's flavour chemicals react with amino acids to build ring-shaped pyrroles, blue with three rings and green with four, and they are safe to eat.

What are the two main subspecies of cultivated garlic?

Hardneck and softneck: hardnecks suit cold winters and grow fewer, bigger cloves, while softnecks keep longer and have pliable stems, which is why braided strings of garlic are softneck.

So-called elephant garlic is actually a variety of which plant?

Wild leek is the species elephant garlic belongs to: its huge bulb looks like giant garlic, but it is a leek in disguise, with a flavour mild enough to eat raw in salads.

How is almost all commercial garlic propagated?

Nearly all commercial garlic is propagated by planting individual cloves, each of which grows into a new bulb; the plant is a clone, and raising it from true seed is possible but rarely done.

What is a garlic scape?

The plant's immature flower stalk is the scape; growers snap it off as it curls so the plant puts its energy into the bulb, then sell the stalks to be stir-fried like asparagus.

What sets Yunnan's 'pearl' garlic apart from ordinary garlic?

A single clove is all each bulb holds: in Yunnan's warm climate the plant misses the winter chill that makes ordinary garlic divide, so it swells into one round bulb, also sold as solo garlic.

The word 'garlic' comes from Old English words meaning what?

Spear leek: Old English garleac joins gar, meaning spear, with leac, meaning leek, the spear probably describing the pointed cloves or the blade-like leaves.

Unlike most vegetable crops, garlic in cold climates is usually planted in which season?

Autumn planting lets garlic root before the ground freezes, and the winter cold that follows is what prompts each plant to divide into a full bulb by the next summer.

In which pharaoh's tomb, dating to about 1325 BC, was well-preserved garlic found?

Tutankhamun's tomb, sealed about 1325 BC, held well-preserved garlic cloves; Herodotus reported that the builders of the Great Pyramid were fed rations of garlic, onions and radishes.

The ancient Greeks left garlic at crossroads as part of a supper for which goddess?

Hecate, goddess of crossroads, was given a supper there on the night of each new moon: Athenian households set out eggs, small cakes, garlic and fish to win her favour and placate the restless dead.

In the Book of Numbers, the Israelites in the wilderness long for the garlic they ate in which land?

Egypt: in Numbers 11:5 the freed Israelites recall the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic they ate there, and the Mishnah later uses 'garlic eaters' as shorthand for Jews.

Which ancient writer credited garlic with sixty-one remedies?

Pliny the Elder gave garlic its own chapter in the Natural History, claiming its very smell drove off serpents and scorpions; a century later Galen praised it as the 'rustic's theriac', a countryman's cure-all.

In Korea's Dangun myth, which animal quits the garlic-and-mugwort diet that turns a bear into a woman?

A tiger shared the bear's cave but quit the fast; the bear held out on 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort, became the woman Ungnyeo, and bore Dangun, legendary founder of the first Korean kingdom.

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, who hangs garlic flowers around Lucy's bedroom to keep the Count out?

Van Helsing has the garlic sent from Haarlem and even hangs it round Lucy's neck, but her mother, finding the room stuffy, clears the flowers away and opens the window, undoing his work.

Why does garlic sit on Iran's haft-sin table at Nowruz?

Its local name begins with the letter S: garlic is 'sir' in Persian, and haft-sin means 'seven S's', so the New Year table also carries apple (sib), sumac (somaq) and sprouted greens (sabzeh).

Some Mahayana Buddhists avoid garlic, onions, leeks and similar plants, known collectively as what?

The five pungent vegetables, or wu hun, always include garlic, though the other four vary by tradition and may include asafoetida; monastics avoid them because they are held to excite the senses.

What nickname does garlic go by because of its strong smell?

The stinking rose is garlic's old nickname; San Francisco's restaurant The Stinking Rose, on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, built its entire menu around the bulb.

What is toum?

A Levantine garlic sauce, toum is simply the Arabic word for garlic; the cloves are traditionally pounded in a wooden mortar with oil, salt and lemon, and it is served with grilled chicken and shawarma.

Emulsifying garlic with olive oil produces which sauce?

Aioli, from the Provençal and Catalan for 'garlic and oil', is at its purest just those two pounded together; that emulsion is hard to stabilise, so many cooks add egg yolk and end up with garlic mayonnaise.

Ajoblanco, the cold Spanish soup, is made by blending garlic and soaked bread with which nut?

Almonds, ground with garlic, soaked bread, olive oil and water, make ajoblanco, served cold with grapes or melon; in lean times such as Spain's post-war years, cooks swapped the nuts for dried-bean flour.

Laba garlic, served with dumplings at Chinese New Year in northern China, is prepared how?

Soaked in vinegar from the Laba festival in the twelfth lunar month, the cloves turn a striking jade green by Chinese New Year and are eaten with dumplings across northern China.

Black garlic gets its colour and sweet, syrupy flavour from what process?

A slow, low-temperature Maillard reaction blackens the cloves: whole bulbs sit for weeks at roughly 60-90 °C in high humidity, with nothing added and nothing burnt, until the harsh bite gives way to a sweet, syrupy flavour.

What is sold as 'green garlic'?

Immature plants pulled like a scallion, before the bulb divides into cloves, are sold as green garlic; the whole stalk is eaten and gives garlic flavour without the raw bite.

Which island off England's south coast has hosted a garlic festival since 1983?

Isle of Wight: the festival, held near the village of Newchurch, home of the island's Garlic Farm, was set up to raise funds and promote the local crop, and has grown into one of the island's biggest summer events.

What is the danger of storing fresh garlic in oil at room temperature?

Clostridium botulinum can grow in the oxygen-free, low-acid oil around raw garlic, so commercial garlic oils are acidified and home-made ones belong in the fridge for a short time only.

Garlic is toxic to dogs and cats because it destroys which component of their blood?

Red blood cells break down in pets that eat garlic, causing anaemia with weakness, a racing heart and blood in the urine; the ASPCA lists the plant as toxic to horses as well.

The sticky juice inside garlic cloves has traditionally been used as what?

Glue for mending glass and porcelain: the sticky juice in the cloves works as an adhesive, and a garlic-derived polysulfide is also approved in the EU and UK as an insecticide against cabbage root fly and poultry red mite.

A 2014 Cochrane review found too little evidence to say whether garlic prevents or treats which everyday illness?

The common cold: the review found only one usable trial, of 146 people, in which garlic takers reported 24 colds against 65 on placebo, too little to judge whether it prevents or treats them.

Which Californian city, southeast of San Jose, held a famous garlic festival from 1979?

Gilroy, nicknamed the Garlic Capital of the World, launched the festival in 1979 after the president of its local college read of a small town abroad making the same claim; run by volunteers, it became the city's top fundraiser.

Which garlic-flavoured novelty were visitors to the Californian festival famous for sampling?

Ice cream laced with garlic became a staple of the Californian festival, a volunteer-run event that has raised millions of dollars for local schools and non-profits since 1979.

Wild garlic's Latin species name, ursinum, is said to refer to which animal's fondness for the bulbs?

The brown bear is the animal: folk tales have bears eating the plant on waking from hibernation to regain their strength, and it is still called bear's garlic in German, French and Polish.

Modern garlic bread is generally considered which cuisine's invention?

Italian-American cooks created modern garlic bread, probably when immigrants swapped scarce olive oil for butter on bruschetta-style toast, and often garlic powder for fresh cloves.

Which Italian pasta dish dresses spaghetti with garlic fried in olive oil and chilli?

Aglio e olio, Italian for 'garlic and oil', needs only cheap pantry staples that keep for months, which made it a standby claimed by both Naples and Rome.

The pink garlic of Lautrec, sold under an EU protected name, is grown in which country?

France: its stiff flower stalk makes the usual braids impossible, so Lautrec's pink garlic is sold in bunches called manouilles; legend says a penniless medieval merchant first paid for a meal there with it.

What is the scientific species name of cultivated garlic?

Allium sativum, named by Linnaeus in 1753, means 'cultivated allium': botanists use sativum for species grown as crops, as opposed to wild ones; A. cepa is the onion and A. porrum the leek.

Which ancient people wrote the world's oldest known recipes, stews seasoned with garlic and leek, on clay tablets?

The Babylonians pressed them into clay around 1730 BC; the tablets, now at Yale, were first catalogued as medical texts before scholars saw that the 'prescriptions' were stews of meat, leek and garlic.

Freshly dug garlic is left somewhere dry and airy for a few weeks before storage, a step known as what?

Curing dries the leaves, roots and the wrappers around the bulb over a few weeks, turning the outer layers papery so the garlic keeps for months instead of spoiling.

Tzatziki, the Eastern Mediterranean sauce, mixes garlic and salt with what?

Yogurt, strained thick and salted, is the base of tzatziki, with garlic, cucumber and olive oil; thinned out, much the same mix becomes the cold soup that Turks call cacık.

Mujdei, a sauce of raw crushed garlic thinned with water or oil, is a staple of which country's cooking?

Romania's mujdei is garlic crushed to a paste with salt and loosened with water, vinegar or sunflower oil, and served with fried fish and grilled chicken or pork; the name contracts 'must de ai', garlic must.