Garlic (Old. Eng. gārlēac, i.e. "spear-leek"; Latin allium; French ail; Spanish ajo; Italian aglio; Catalan all; German Knoblauch), Allium sativum, is a bulbous perennial food plant of the family Alliaceae.
Garlic is most often used as a seasoning or condiment, and is believed to have some medicinal value[1], notably against hypertension. When crushed or finely chopped it yields allicin, a powerful antibiotic and anti-fungal compound.
It has long, narrow, flat, obscurely keeled leaves, a deciduous spathe, and a globose umbel of whitish flowers, among which are small bulbils. The bulb has membranous scales, in the axils of which are 10 or 12 cloves, or smaller bulbs. From these new bulbs can be procured by planting out in late winter or early spring.
The bulbs are best preserved hung in a dry place. If of fair size, twenty of them weigh about 1 lb. To prevent the plant from running to leaf, Pliny (Nat. Hist. xix. 34) advised bending the stalk downward and covering with earth; seeding, he observes, may be prevented by twisting the stalk. (By "seeding", he mostly likely means the development of small, less potent bulbs.)
Garlic is cultivated in the same manner as the shallot. It is stated to have been grown in England before the year 1548. The percentage composition of the bulbs is given by E. Solly (Trans. Hon. Soc. Loud., new ser., iii. p. 60) as water 84.09, organic matter 13.38, and inorganic matter 1.53--that of the leaves being water 87.14, organic matter 11.27 and inorganic matter 1.59.
From the earliest times garlic has been used as an article of diet. It formed part of the food of the Israelites in Egypt (Numb. xi. 5) and of the labourers employed by Cheops in the construction of his pyramid. Garlic is still grown in Egypt, where, however, the Syriafl is the kind most esteemed (see Rawlinson's Herodotus, ~i. 125).
It was largely consumed by the ancient Greek and Roman soldiers, sailors and rural classes (cf. Virg. Ed. ii. II), and, as Pliny tells us (N.H. xix. 32), by the African peasantry. Galen eulogizes it as the "rustic's theriac" (cure-all) (see F Adams's Paulus Aegineta, p. 99), and Alexander Neckam, a writer of the 12th century (see Wright's edition of his works, p. 473, 1863), recommends it as a palliative of the heat of the sun in field labor.
"The people in places where the simoon is frequent," says Mountstuart Elphinstone (An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, p. 140, 1815), "eat garlic, and rub their lips and noses with it, when they go out in the heat of the summer, to prevent their suffering by the simoon." "O dura messorum ilia," exclaims Horace (Epod. iii.), as he records his detestation of the popular esculent, to smell of which was accounted a sign of vulgarity (cf. Shakespeare, Coriol. iv. 6, and Meas. for Meas Iii. 2).
Garlic was rare in traditional English cookery, and a much more common ingredient in southern Europe. Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads, as a supper for Hecate (Theophrastus, Characters, l~.eunbcuuoviac); and according to Pliny garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium in lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food. Garlic possesses stimulant and stomachic properties, and was of old, as still sometimes now, employed as a medicinal remedy.
Pliny (N.H. xx. 23) gives an exceedingly long list of complaints in which it was considered beneficial. Dr T Sydenham valued it as an application in confluent smallpox, and, says Cullen (Mat. Med. ii. p. 174, 1789), found some dropsies cured by it alone. Early in the 20th century, it was sometimes used in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis or phthisis.
The wild "crow garlic" and "field garlic" of Britain are the species Allium vineale and A. oleraceum, respectively.
The term "Wild Garlic" is now used to refer to ramsons (Allium ursinum).
based largely on an article from 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica