A SALUTE TO ONIONS

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30971, 29 January 1966, Page 4

A SALUTE TO ONIONS

A Salute To Onions. By Oscar A. Mendelsohn. Rigby. 179 pp.

In this whimsical, delightful book Mr Mendelsohn deals with the entire onion family: garlic, leeks, chives, shallot and scallion, their history and how best to prepare them either cooked or raw. Swift wrote the sound advice: “But lest your kissing should be spoil’d your onions must be thoroughly boil’d.” And Sydney Smith, that witty churchman, had the right

idea. In his “Recipe for a salad” he writes “Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl and, scarce suspected, animate the whole.”

The onion, the garlic and the leek are probably the oldest of all cultivated vegetables. They have an authentic history reaching back for at least 5000 years, and are thus as ancient as the earliest of human written records. There is mention of them in the inscriptions on the buildings and monuments of Egypt. The Great Pyramid at Giza built by Cheops about 3730 B.C. is an example. The diet of the sweating toilers who built it was reported to be composed largely of onions and garlic. Down the ages there have been strong beliefs in the curative qualities of the onion group, although there is probably no real therapeutic value in them except as a source of vitamins. Hippocrates (460370 8.C.) regarded the onion as good for the sight and bad for the body: and garlic as bad for the sight and good for the body. In the Middle Ages and later garlic and onions were prescribed to cure bites from dogs and adders. Galen, the celebrated Greek physician of the second century, must have been one of the earliest to offer hope to the bald. Sinclair, in his “Code of Health and Longevity,” versifies Galen's eulogy of onions; "Bp Galea’s rule, such as phlegmatic are. A stomach good within them doe prepare And when the head is naked left of hair Onions, being sod or stamp’d apain repair."

The recipe for baldness called for the juice of onions to be mixed with honey and rubbed on the scalp night and morning.

Of the recipes given Kidney Dumplings will be tried, so also Onion-wrapped Egg; its quick and easy preparation will appeal to the housewife in a hurry. Asparagus, with Garlic, is another easy to prepare dish, but perhaps the most unusual is the Onion and Orange Salad; of -this recipe the author says, “Don’t prejudge this. Try it?” Ail the recipes Mr Mendelsohn gives interpersed as they are with items, both grave and gay, about places and people, are excellent and, of importance to the New Zealand cook, they contain ingredients possible to obtain and simple to assemble.