GARLIC ROOTS

By Sarah Baird

We all know that for plants to flourish, they need a few key resources like water, sunlight and air. For communities to grow and thrive, though, they require a few more foundational elements: relationships, shared bits of culture and history, and—yes— culinary touchstones.

For millions of people across the world, garlic is one of those revered pieces of local fiber, having been integrated into daily life through meals, medicine, agriculture and even pop culture for centuries. And whether you’re examining the Korean myth that the country was founded by 20 cloves of garlic and a bear woman, or how garlic has long been treated as Russia’s third doctor (behind bathhouses and vodka), it becomes strikingly clear that garlic is so much more than a mealtime ingredient.

GARLIC IN AGRICULTURE

Garlic is one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world, with records indicating that this edible, medicinal bulb’s agricultural origin story begins in Central Asia some 5,000 years ago. But thanks to the hardiness of its cloves—and its ability to be pulled from the ground, cured, transported, then successfully replanted with ease—it didn’t stay isolated in Central Asia for long. Instead, garlic quickly became a plant well-known to practically every ancient civilization from India to Greece to the Vikings. Its far-reaching spread as a major crop commodity mirrors human migration patterns over thousands of years.

Garlic is not a monolith, though: It’s a colorful, bountiful and diverse crop with plenty of varieties across different ecosystems. The two major subspecies for garlic are “hardneck” and “softneck,” terms coined by agriculturalist Ron England in the early 1990s. Hardneck garlic typically has more complex, pungent flavors than softneck and is identified by its tall, flowering stem known as a scape, which can be eaten as a seasonal vegetable and planted to propagate new garlic bulbs. Softneck garlic, which is more commonly found on American tables and can be easily stored for long periods, has far more cloves than its hardneck cousins (typically between eight and 20) and lacks the hardneck’s signature stalk.

But the garlic family tree doesn’t stop there. Thanks to garlic’s wide-ranging travels, capacity to thrive in pretty much any growing conditions and ability to reproduce both sexually and asexually, there are now 10 types of garlic within the two subspecies, according to the USDA, and over 450 unique cultivars therein from around the world.

Several factors like rainfall, altitude and overwintering conditions help to form garlic that is best suited to certain regions. Like wine grapes and tomatoes, this vast variety offers the kind of agricultural and culinary journey that excites food enthusiasts as well as fans of culture and agriculture. There’s the large, violet-and-porcelain cloves of Mexican Purple garlic and the easy-to-store Creole Red, which grows best in warmer climates. Vekak garlic, part of the “purple stripe” family, has a warmth that lends itself to roasting, while Georgian Fire garlic—from the Republic of Georgia—has spicy, teardrop-shaped bulbs renowned for their anti-inflammatory properties. If any restaurant ever makes a “garlics of the world” tasting menu, go ahead and sign me up.

Garlic is also a fine friend to many other crops, often pulling double-duty as an unofficial guardian of the soil as it grows, scaring off bugs and blight with its very presence. If you’re growing garlic this year, consider using this companion planting method to the benefit of your entire backyard ecosystem.

“‘Companion planting’ is the practice of planting certain crops in proximity to each other to optimize pest control, pollination and overall health. Garlic repels aphids, cabbage worms, slugs and other pests, making it a beneficial companion to...lettuce, spinach, potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage and broccoli,” writes Robin Cherry in her 2014 book, Garlic: An Edible Biography. “Garlic is a good companion to all fruit trees because its aroma repels caterpillars, mites and Japanese beetles...while also [attracting] good insects by providing shelter, pollen and nectar.”

Beyond the backyard and on a much grander scale, China is the world’s largest producer of garlic today, making up 80% of total global cultivation, while California accounts for 90% of garlic growers in the United States. If you want to go really deep into trying different off-the-grid garlic varietals, true wild garlic still grows in the hills and meadows of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and has been introduced to most of the Eastern United States and Canada (where it is often listed as an invasive species). Whether you live in Alabama or Alberta, wild garlic is just waiting for you to come unearth it.

GARLIC IN POLITICS & SOCIETY

Like most products and ideas deeply woven into the fabric of our society, garlic has never been immune from politics. From the days of Ovid, through medieval England and into early 20th-century America, garlic was frequently treated by the upper class as a food that was beneath them due to its pungent, lingering smell, leading to the use of derogatory terms like “garlic eaters” and subsequent discrimination based on culinary choices.

In Cervantes’s Don Quixote, for example, the wayward hero decries to his secondin-command, “Do not eat garlic or onions, for their smell will reveal that you are a peasant!” And in 1963’s The Joy of Cooking, the authors make a point to call out the rampant mid-century hypocrisy in suburban America surrounding the ingredient. “Garlic is perhaps the most controversial addition to food…as our guests have sometimes been obviously relishing [it], unaware [they are] eating garlic while inveighing loudly against it,” write Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker.

Even in Italy, Northern Italians have a sustained history of prejudice against Southern Italians’ use of the ingredient, specifically for the odor. “The disrepute heaped on garlic—and those who eat it—has its roots in the Italian peninsula, and it reflects the class and racial biases that undergird Italy’s longsimmering North/South tensions,” writes Rocco Marinaccio in his 2012 article, “Garlic Eaters”: Reform and Resistance a Tavola. “In this context, the reek of garlic particularly adheres to poor southerners, who made up the substantive majority of emigrants to the United States. The transference of regionally based class tensions from the Italian peninsula to the United States during the era of mass European migration…thus provided the grounds for a similar association of garlic with the lower orders to emerge in the United States.”

In more recent years—as garlic has gone from stigmatized bulb to staple ingredient in most kitchens—the politics of garlic economics and importation have taken center stage in several high-profile, David-vs.-Goliath style international battles. Perhaps most notable is New Mexican garlic farmer Stanley Crawford’s journey, which was well documented in his 2019 book, The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farmer in the Age of Global Vampires. (There’s also a Netflix documentary, “Garlic Breath,” if that’s more your speed.) In 2014, Crawford questioned U.S. tariff exemptions for the country’s largest importer of Chinese garlic, setting off a yearslong legal journey. By 2019—at least partially in response to pressures from Crawford and other small farmers—tariffs on Chinese garlic were hiked to 25%, leading to a sudden, unexpected rush on American-grown versions of the odiferous bulbs. “This 25% tariff on inbound Chinese garlic has been a fantastic thing for American garlic farmers,” Ken Christopher of Christopher Ranch—the country’s largest garlic farm—told NPR’s Marketplace in 2020.

GARLIC IN FOLKLORE

Whether treated as divine or openly maligned, chances are that your greatgrandparents had some pretty strong feelings, and perhaps superstitions, surrounding garlic.

Thanks in large part to its distinctive, powerful odor, garlic has long been considered a source of protection against danger in many forms. Korean lore recommended consuming pickled garlic before walking through mountain paths, believing that it would ward off tigers. Ancient Greeks would place garlic atop a pile of stones at crossroads in hopes that it would cause demons to lose their way, as well as hang braids of it around the room where a woman was giving birth to keep nefarious spirits at bay. King Henry IV of France bathed in garlic to keep evil specters from harming him. And throughout the early centuries of Mediterranean culture, women would carry garlic in their pockets to ward off the jealous energy of the “evil eye” against their children, a superstition that still carries on to this day.

It’s Romania, though—the home to vampire mythos galore—where garlic does the most work toward repelling all things otherworldly. This is particularly true on the Night of the Vampires (November 29), a major folkloric holiday when, the story goes, the barrier between the supernatural world and visible world vanishes, allowing wicked ghosts and spirits to pass through. “On [this day], children in Transylvanian villages are told by their mothers to eat garlic in the morning and recite the following: ‘Garlic is shaped in the form of a cross; I have a cross on my forehead,’” writes Cherry. “The incantation is meant to ward off evil charms and spells that have been directed at the child.”

Of course, garlic isn’t just the go-to defender against unnatural beings—it’s also lucky. Roman brides carried bouquets of garlic to symbolize fertility and longevity, while Hungarian jockeys rub their horses with garlic for luck before a race to this day. And when it comes to dreams, garlic is a major (mostly positive) subconscious symbol while you’re sleeping. “To dream that you are eating garlic denotes that you will discover hidden secrets, and to dream that there is garlic in the house is lucky,” writes Richard Folkard in his 1884 book, Plant Lore.

But not every tradition sees garlic as a powerful force for good. The prophet Mohammed claimed that when Satan was cast out of the garden of Eden, garlic would spring up wherever he put his left foot, and onion wherever he put his right. His negative feelings toward garlic were so strong that he declared, “He who has eaten ... [raw] garlic … should not approach our mosque, because the angels are offended by the strong smells that offend the children of Adam.”

But for those who consider themselves garlic lovers, the bulbs might be just what you need to get better shut-eye. Superstition in Rajasthan, India, dictates that those who have nightmares should keep two or three garlic cloves under their pillows while sleeping to end the scary dreams. Feel free to try this out the next time you’re jolted awake at 2 a.m., and let me know how it goes.

GARLIC IN POP CULTURE

When it comes to food in books, on film and in the greater public consciousness, there are few ingredients that have found their way into a more central position in plot lines and story arcs than garlic, which—in many cases—becomes a character unto itself, revealing motives and helping mine emotions like a supporting cast member.

“And most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath!” Nick Bottom declares in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“Paranoia’s the garlic in life’s kitchen, right? You can never have too much,” writes Thomas Pynchon in his 2013 novel, Bleeding Edge.

And in the 1988 Nobel Prize-winning novel, The Garlic Ballads, Mo Yan uses the 1987 Chinese “garlic glut” as background for a lyrical tale of love, greed and corruption.

But perhaps most famously, this stinking rose is well-known to horror movie enthusiasts and Halloween costumers alike for repelling Transylvania’s palest blood-sucking villain: Count Dracula.

Building from generations-old folklore and rituals, many featuring garlic necklaces and door garlands serving as protection from evil beings, Irish author Bram Stoker penned his Gothic horror novel Dracula in 1897, cementing garlic’s place as a tool on the side of the good guys against the undead.

“Oh, Professor, I believe you are only putting up a joke on me. Why, these flowers are only common garlic,” says Stoker’s heroine Lucy when Professor Van Helsing attempts to adorn her room with garlic as protection from Count Dracula. “To my surprise, Van Helsing rose up and said with all his sternness, his iron jaw set and his bushy eyebrows meeting: ‘No trifling with me! I never jest! There is grim purpose in all I do; and I warn you that you do not thwart me.’”

Readers, and eventually, filmgoers, were hooked on the mythology built by Stoker, and riffs on vampires and garlic have been playing out now for over a century on camera. There's 1987’s The Lost Boys, in which a particularly bejeweled punk vampire yells, “Garlic don’t work, boys!” as he is splashed with a skin-singeing, garlic-and-holy-water combo, and a series of nine garlic-tinged Dracula films (Brides of Dracula, anyone?) created by the British production company Hammer. There’s Leslie Nielsen covering his nose and lamenting, “Ah! Ew! Garlic!” in Mel Brook’s goofy 1995 film, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and even spooky, garlicky teen flicks like Rockula, which features a mopey young vampire (and rock star wannabe) who actually—twist!—loves garlic. (Alas, garlic doesn’t play a major role in the Twilight series, but as long as the author is still writing prequels and sequels, I say there’s still time for a little hat tip to the pungent bulb.)

Garlic finds its way into the spotlight (and Sunday dinner) frequently in Martin Scorsese movies, including starring in one of the most culinarily reverent scenes ever committed to film: the Goodfellas prison cooking montage. “In prison, dinner was always a big thing. We had a pasta course and then we had a meat or fish. Paulie...was doing a year for contempt, and he had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor and sliced it so thin it would liquefy in the pan with just a little oil. It was a very good system.” says narrator Henry Hill in a voiceover, as garlic is cut with all the tenderness and finesse of a five-star chef—in the confines of a jail cell that puts most first apartments to shame.

Not to be outdone, the extended family of television’s most complicated mob boss, Tony Soprano, also demonstrate time and again that they know their way around a garlic clove, and in 2002’s The Sopranos Family Cookbook, there’s even an entire section devoted to how to properly cut garlic— complete with Goodfellas reference.

But it’s documentarian Les Blank who wins the prize for the most garlicky of all garlic films: 1980’s Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers. The title (which is taken from the old saying, “Garlic is as good as ten mothers for keeping the girls away”) was filmed at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California in the late 1970s and features more bulbs-per-frame than have ever been seen before or since on the silver screen.

Blank, who is better known regionally for his legendary work capturing the heart of both New Orleans and Cajun culture through films like Always for Pleasure (1978), Dry Wood (1973) and Hot Pepper (1973), turned his thoughtful lens on the culture surrounding garlic’s rise to prominence in Northern California during a time when getting back in touch with nature through gardening, organic ingredients and a deeper appreciation for local foodways was on the rise. Humor abounds in the documentary, and from giant, floppy garlic-shaped hats, to “fight mouthwash, eat garlic” bumper stickers, to a social club known as the Order of the Stinking Rose, the film captures garlic’s role in a larger social movement with levity and wit. Blank even suggested that when the movie was shown, the projectionist should start roasting garlic in the back of the theater when the movie began so that by the middle of the film, the audience would have the fragrant scent of garlic wafting through the aisles. (Smell-o-vision at its finest!)

And if all this talk of garlic festivals has you worried you have missed out on the fun, never fear. Gilroy’s garlic festival is one of several each year in North America, including other odiferous events in Toronto, Minnesota, Cleveland, South Florida and Mystic, Connecticut. There’s sure to be a garlic-lover’s celebration somewhere (relatively) nearby.

GARLIC IN CUISINE

Last—but certainly not least—is garlic’s role as a culinary dynamo: peeled, smashed, roasted, and sautéed into meals the world over and at the very core of flavoring dishes from Italian-American pomodoro sauce to Mexican sopa de ajo (garlic soup).

In his infamous autobiography, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain writes, “Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime.... Please, treat your garlic with respect.”

With so much weight and heady reverence given to garlic outside the kitchen—through medicinal uses, as a spiritual talisman and a focal point of literature—appreciating the intrinsic value of garlic as an ingredient when preparing a meal is critical. Always buy garlic bulbs whole and keep store-bought cloves at room temperature in a dark, dry place like a pantry or cupboard. If you get your hands on ultra-fresh garlic at the farmer’s market, that should go in the refrigerator and be eaten within a week. Using a garlic press might seem like an ultra-easy shortcut if you’re adding crushed garlic to a dish, but mincing by hand always produces a mellower flavor. Bonus? The hand-cut garlic is much less likely to burn when cooking. And speaking of burning, avoid charring your garlic by always toasting it over low heat—turning it up a notch, unfortunately, isn’t going to result in the fragrant aroma you seek.

And whether you’re stir-frying Cantonesestyle greens, whipping up an aioli or making a Provençal pistou, reflecting on the profound ways in which garlic has shaped global cuisine, history and lifestyle while cooking will bring a deeper level of appreciation for this ingredient that’s long been, rightfully, placed upon a pedestal.

After all, it’s no wonder that in Cajun cooking, the Holy Trinity is onion, celery and bell pepper, but garlic is “the pope.”

We get our garlic from Spice World, which wasfounded in New Orleans over 70 years ago byAndy "Pops" Caneza. Today three generations ofhis family grow, harvest and package the garlic wesell at Rouses.​