Vegetable History

Allium cepa L. (Liliaceae)

Turkish: sogan; French: oignon; Italian: cipolla; Spanish: cebolla; Greek: krommoun; Arabic: bassal

Plant origin

Onions are thought to have originated in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Iran, Baluchistan, Pakistan). There is some thinking that onions may have been indigenous in an area ranging from Palestine to India. The Mediterranean is a secondary center of origin for the large types of onion.

Plant history

Onions have been cultivated since prehistoric times and are not known as a wild plant. The ancient Egyptians certainly cultivated onions about 3200 B.C. and regarded the onion as a symbol of the universe. The vegetable's name may derive from the Latin umus, meaning "one". During the era of the pharaoh Tutankhamen (about 1550 B.C.) onions were mixed with wine to form a paste that was placed in a woman's vagina to stop her from menstruating.

Onions were known to the Chaldeans before the Christian era, and they were one of the vegetables mentioned in the Bible that the Jews so missed when they left Egypt. Onions were grown 4,000 years ago in ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia. Garlic and onions have been unearthed at the Minoan royal palace at Knossos on Crete. Herodotus said that onions, radishes and garlic were a part of the staple diet of the workers who built the Great Pyramid at Giza in the third millenium B.C. Egyptian onions had an excellent flavor, and people ate them both raw and cooked, except for the priests who were prohibited from eating them. From the time of Hippocrates (430 B.C.) to Theophrastus (322 B.C.) to Pliny (A.D. 79), several onion cultivars

were named and described. Columella (A.D. 42) speaks about an onion that the country people called unionem, a word that appears to be the origin of the word onion. There are a number of onion recipes in the fourth-century A.D. Roman cookery book by Apicius, although onions are used there more as a seasoning. Old Mediterranean folklore relates that when Satan left the Garden of Eden after the fall of man, onions grew from the spot where his right foot touched the ground, and garlic where his left foot touched the ground. During the medieval era of Charlemagne (late 8th and 9th century), onions played a role as an item people used to pay feudal tithes. Throughout the Middle Ages, onions played an important role in cooking and in the dietetic theories of good health that were prevalent at the time. By the 16th century, onions were no longer considered exotic, and the Portuguese physician Amatus Lusitanus (1511-1568) wrote that they were the most common of the vegetables.