Allium Bacchanalium!

James Gillray, 'French Liberty, British Slavery'. Les pauvres Français  ont les oignons seulement, mais les Anglaises ont le rosbif! The price of liberty has been poverty.

I’ve been absent from this blog for a while because I’ve had other fish to fry. My book Onion: A Global History has been contracted with Reaktion Books and will be published in April 2014! It will discuss the fascinating history of onions, garlic and leeks from pre-history till the present day. Naturally doing the proposal for this has kept me busy, but now things have calmed down a bit, I’ll be back on blogging. If you want a sneak preview of Onion you could read the article ‘Onions at War’ I wrote for The Foodie Bugle last month. 

Anyway, not wishing to depart from all things allium, I thought I’d share with you Mrs Beeton on the onion: 

PROPERTIES OF THE ONION.—The onion is possessed of a white, acrid, volatile oil, holding sulphur in solution, albumen, a good deal of uncrystallizable sugar and mucilage; phosphoric acid, both free and combined with lime; acetic acid, citrate of lime, and lignine. Of all the species of allium, the onion has the volatile principle in the greatest degree; and hence it is impossible to separate the scales of the root without the eyes being affected. The juice is sensibly acid, and is capable of being, by fermentation, converted into vinegar, and, mixed with water or the dregs of beer, yields, by distillation, an alcoholic liquor. Although used as a common esculent, onions are not suited to all stomachs; there are some who cannot eat them either fried or roasted, whilst others prefer them boiled, which is the best way of using them, as, by the process they then undergo, they are deprived of their essential oil. The pulp of roasted onions, with oil, forms an excellent anodyne and emollient poultice to suppurating tumours.