The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

thriftwizard

I wonder when & why garlic fell out of favour? I believe it is a native plant and the name comes from the Saxon "Gar" meaning spear and "lic" = leek. I'm kind of interested in the history of cooking & now I've thought of it, I'll have to rootle round in the innards of Google etc. until I come up with an answer, but I suspect it'll have something to do with being thought "cheap" or "lower class" or - horrors! - foreign...

greenbee

let us know what you find out @thriftwizard - it could be that it was used medicinally but not seen as food. Or it may have fallen out of favour when hygiene standards started to improve and people started to smell a bit nicer so the garlic smell became more noticeable! Things like runner beans were originally grown for their flowers and the beans thought to be poisonous, so there are all sorts of options. 

maisie_cat

thriftwizard said:

I wonder when & why garlic fell out of favour? I believe it is a native plant and the name comes from the Saxon "Gar" meaning spear and "lic" = leek. I'm kind of interested in the history of cooking & now I've thought of it, I'll have to rootle round in the innards of Google etc. until I come up with an answer, but I suspect it'll have something to do with being thought "cheap" or "lower class" or - horrors! - foreign...

I didn't know it had fallen out of favour, I use it most days, we have wild garlic here so when we had the Rayburn lit I would dry it on a rack above to make garlic powder. I do also have several jars of garlic puree in my stores, I would not really want to live without it.

euronorris

Speaking of garlic. DD and I just harvested ours. We have 6 this size now on the windowsill

[Deleted User]

Oooohhh beautiful and a really good size well done!

ivyleaf

maisie_cat I think thriftwizard means, why garlic fell out of favour in this country in the past iyswim.  For example my Dairy Book of Home Cookery, published in the early 1970s,  doesn't seem to use it, and I remember my Marguerite Patten book "Perfect Cooking" told cooks to "Just leave the garlic out if you don't like it."  That was in the only recipe in the entire book that included garlic - I think it was in a chapter entitled something like "Some food from around the world".

(Apols if I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, thriftwizard.)

boultdj

From what I can make out wild garlic is not pulled for it's bulb, which is small, but use it's leaves and flowers in cooking, and again they are small, so I think you would need a lot to give any taste, when factories started most people would have gone to work in them and long hours would knock down time to go forage for food.
Plus all the place I know it grows are next to rivers, if it floods what would it do to the plants?

Anyone else seen the news story of us not having enough lorry drivers? That's why shelves are empty in the supermarkets, we need 60 thousand plus more drivers to keep up with the deliveries. No wonder my friend say's she's tired if her and the other drivers have that much shortfall to cover.

annieb64

We had wild garlic soup and quiche at a hotel in Austria.  I've  seen it for sale at the Farmers  Market in Canterbury. It's  quite strong so you may need less than you think.

thriftwizard

Spot on, @ivyleaf; I'm wondering how come a foodstuff that's been growing here & easily available since Roman times at least just doesn't feature in cookery books from the 1930s through to the late '70s. It would seem that it is basically a class thing; it was recommended for manual/physical workers to improve their health & strength & keep coughs & colds at bay. So "nice' middle-class people probably came to associate the smell (when not prepared properly) with the lower orders, hence it's hardly mentioned in "polite" cookery books. I know my mother used to refuse to eat anything with onions or garlic in for 24 hours before taking a church service, "in case the communicants can smell it on my breath," for example. (Or maybe there's some spiritual significance I'm not aware of?)

Mind you, ditto nettles; I've just hacked down the nettles leaning over the fence towards my allotment, but this year I've brought them home to strip the seeds off & dry; apparently they too are wildly nutritious, and they certainly count as free food as far as I'm concerned. I brought loads of fresh leaves back in early spring, dried those & crumbled them into a (big) herb jar & a pinch goes into every soup, stew & gravy. I doubt I'd ever get away with claiming nettles as a crop (although I could also ret & hackle the stems and spin the resulting fibre) but there they are on the farm side of the fence, like the sloes & blackberries, and they don't need to go to waste when they over-grow into "my" space. They've also produced a wonderful crop of ladybirds, who are now guarding my broad beans from the dreaded blackfly. How come something so useful & nutritious, and actually rather tasty (similar to spinach) is just seen as a nuisance & something to be rid of, now?

boultdj

Nettle is also an anti histamine, people with asthma were encouraged to eat it during the war.   My mum was shocked when I came home with some nettle tea and told me of having to go pick it for couple of the aunts/ uncles as a kid during the war as asthma runs in our family.