The fourth editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the man responsible for Su-Sz, Wh-Wo and the glossy pink lipstick of X-Z, was one Charles Talbut Onions, a man with no beard but a taste for a vowel.
An onion, however, is something else entirely. An onion is a vegetable and the Franz Beckenbauer of the genus Allium; a biological classification that includes things like shallots, leek and the suburban dips’ favourite garnish, the chive. The onion has many attributes, including making grown men cry which, as we read in many a weekend supplement, is generally agreed to be a good things for a man’s inner mojo. Perhaps even a non-verbal means to elicit some altruistic behaviour from a brooding spouse or loved one?
Come January then, what with its post-Christmas emotional trauma and discarded wrapping paper, and a time when divorce lawyers eat up the annual budget, it might be worth shedding a few public tears before googling ‘Fiona Shackleton availability’. If needed, with the help of an onion, but more on that later.
The onion has been cultivated by hollow-eyed peasants for at least seven thousand years but no one knows exactly where they are from. Maybe Iran, maybe India. Someone found traces of onion in a Bronze Age settlement in China and the Ancient Egyptians, all moody looks and cotton sheets, thought the onion, with its spherical shape and concentric rings had an air of the eternal life about it. Indeed, traces of onion were found in the eye sockets of Ramesses IV, the Third Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty who minced about circa 1150 BC, and whose mummy was found in the cache of Amenhotep II’s tomb in 1898. Such findings suggested the Ancient Egyptians missed out on the real the benefits of the onion, namely a liberal sprinkling over a fattened ox.
Aside from crying, the benefits of onions have been long appreciated. Indeed Pliny the Elder, the military commander of the early Roman Empire and author of the encyclopaedic Naturalis Historia which basically became the editorial model for latter day encyclopaedias, wrote about the benefits of sticking some chopped up onion into one’s boiled cabbage. The benefits, he murmured to his court, ranged from a better night’s sleep, to healing oral sores, dysentery and even as an antidote to the nip of a stray dog. Of which you might think, back in AD 30, there were quite a few, stray and loose, and all looking for something to nip.
With wok to hand, the modern day onion enthusiast is somewhat spoilt for choice with what to get ‘sizzling-on-down’ with. There is of course the humble brown onion, full flavoured and the go-to store cupboard favourite. Chose from the Vidalia, the exotic sounding Cevenes or the even more impressive Walla Walla. Wanting something to bring a bit of colour to your dish, and the red onion is on hand. A Hardy to the White Onion’s Laurel. For those too impatient to wait for the onion to mature into a full succulent bulb, there is the option of spring onions or scallions to liven up a bored looking home-counties salad.
For those with real vision, however, for the mavericks and bon vivants and those who see the local chip shop as a central feature of a balanced diet, there is no greater onion than the pickler. A little smaller, similar perhaps to a boiler or pearl, but one you can cram into a jar and top up with vinegar. When Dante sat down to write The Divine Comedy, his iconic trilogy of poems charting the poet’s journey from hell, through purgatory and on up to heaven – and a body of work that so crisply depicted the medieval view of Christianity – one can imagine he did so, perhaps, with pickled onions in mind. Heaven on a plate. With a side of mushy peas.
So why all the crying? Well, this is down to the release of syn-Propanethial-S-oxide, a volatile liquid that acts as a lachrymatory agent on the eyes. Enzymes are also released when the Sabatier slices through onion cells and these enzymes – called allinases – get to work breaking down various amino acid sulfoxides. The gas then diffuses through the air, reaches the eyes, and before you know it you are crying like you cried when Willy the orca whale cleared the dyke in the closing scene of the eponymous 1993 commercial hit, Free Willy. For those cut from the cloth of Victorian public schools, who want to avoid the overt sign of weakness in front of the children, try running the onion under water, or leave the root-end intact when going chop-chop-chop. The root has a higher concentration of sulphur compounds. Alternatively buy a fan, and blow the toxic mist over sink, or sous-chef.
If all that’s left you thinking that the onion might be a good bet for the SIPP, you better take time to thumb the 1955 Onion Act which bans the trading of futures contracts on onions. You see, you could once trade onions, like pork bellies, or orange juice, all until the fall of 1955 when a Sam Siegel and a Vincent Kosuga cornered the market for onions.
Between them, Siegel and Kosuga bought up 98% of all the onions available in Chicago. This worked out to be barns and barns of onions, about 14,000,000kg in all. Siegel and Kosuga then went out one Monday morning and told all the onion farmers they knew that unless they came round with a tractor and a very large trailer and bought some of their onions, they were going to flood the market and trash prices. Grinning wildly at each other, they then phoned up their broker and started to short onions, a means of financial jiggery-pokery which meant they could profit from a fall in the price of onions.
Given they had so many sacks of onions stuffed into their barns, some started to go off, and so they shipped them out of Chicago, got them cleaned up, and then shipped back in to town. The ‘new’ stock, caused traders to think there was a sudden excess of onions and prices collapsed. Siegel and Kosuga made millions of dollars and drove many onion farmers out of onions forever. After a number of hearings, the Michigan congressman Gerald Ford – the same Gerald Ford who went on to become the 38th President – said enough was enough and sponsored a bill which effectively banned futures trading in onions.
To avoid your own onions going off, store them in a single layer in a dry, cool, well ventilated cupboard. A larder if you have one, sock drawer if you don’t. But don’t stick any other vegetables with then, the onions will draw moisture from them and cause them to go off.
For those who have a new-found interest in the genus Allium, the September 2018 post about Garlic might just keep the pulse racing.
So there you have it. Onions, who would have thought it. Low on calories, good for a savoury dish.
Lovely.
Hepburnsays 