THE HUMBLE ONION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 9160, Issue 9160, 9 March 1910, Page 7

THE HUMBLE ONION.

Onions are the foundation of all cookery, good and bad. There is not one of the onion deepisers who does not eat and enjoy them without knowing whence comes the subtle aroma which is so alluring and individual. This is where a good cook excels. The ancient Egyptians considered the onion almost too sacred to eat, and had a mitigated veneration for it, which may, or may not, have been inspired by their gourmet priests. It must be remembered in this connection that in recent times it is a horticultural fact that the excessive taste of the onion has been very much mellowed.

Among many quaint traditional attributes of the onion is the old gardener's belief that the rose loves the onion, and puts forth its sweetest blossoms when planted near it. Alphoneo Karr, in his "Journey Round My Garden," speaks of yellow garlic (the " moly" of Homer): "It is more than it appear to be; it has the power of keeping us safe from enchantments, spells, and evil presages. A crow may fly past you on your left hand, but you need not entertain any fear, if only you have yellow garlic in your garden." Onions are said to be an excellent nerve strengthener, and useful in cases of nervous prostration. In epidemic onions are considered protective, and are said to absorb all morbid matter in their neighbourhood. A string of them hanging in a house amid other houses which were all infected by cholera became unintelligibly diseased, and black, but proved thereby protective to the inmates of that particular house. The naturalist Frank Buckland had the highest opinion of onions as a cure for insomnia. It is only by the experience of leaving it out that it can be proved how dull, flat, and uninteresting are soups, sauces, stews, gravies, salads, and seasonings of all kinds, without a suggestion of onion, or shallot, leek, garlic, and chives— all of these being kith and kin of the onion. The flavour must "lurk," ae Sydney Smith says, and, of course, must not be permitted to predominate impertinently; it must merely hint, be a suggestion, a suspicion; but without it, there is the certainty of insipidity. Onion plaster for bronchitis; onion broth for influenza ; and onion poultice for chilblains, are all old-fashion-ed remedies. The onion is at once the most democratic and most aristocratic of roots, " a radical of the radicals," and yet one without which the King's table would be incomplete. Who, then, will despise the humble onion?