The Chemical Weapons of Onions and Garlic
By Harold McGee
Published New York Times: June 7, 2010


WHAT do garlic and onions have in common with gunpowder? A lot. They’re incendiary. They can do harm and they delight. Sulfur is central to their powers. And they helped inspire the work of a chemist who has just published a welcome treatise on the smelly yet indispensable allium family.

Eric Block became hooked on chemistry by way of basement and driveway pyrotechnics while growing up in Forest Hills, Queens. By high school he had become the science nerd while his schoolmates Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were the epitome of cool. He found his calling in allium chemistry as a new Ph.D., and over four decades has worked out many of its details at the State University at Albany.

Dr. Block’s book “Garlic and Other Alliums: The Lore and the Science” was published earlier this year by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The chemical details are tough for a nonspecialist to follow, but much of the text is in happily clear English. It includes a wide range of cultural references and beautifully reproduced images, among them excerpts from Sumerian cuneiform tablets and “Dracula” and pictures of the firework-like flower heads of ornamental alliums, the onion domes of Russian churches and Antonio Gaudí’s garlic-topped Barcelona apartment house.

Dr. Block also carefully evaluates the mixed evidence for allium efficacy in folk and modern medicine, and explicates the chemistry and treatment of garlic breath. (It can emanate from deep within for a day and more; raw kiwi, eggplant, mushrooms or parsley can help.)

Most helpfully for the cook, he sorts out the different kinds of allium flavors and how they evolve on the cutting board and stove. And he gives an intriguing preview of new alliums just over the horizon.
Full piece at NYT.