I’m not simply asking “why” because it doesn’t really make sense to question a country’s unique tastes.

But I am curious about where it came from historically and how it developed, considering that in most cultures garlic is considered too strong and intense a flavour. Some people say it came with Italian immigrants but it sounds weird to me as I’m from Italy and garlic is not really a thing there (in fact, most people hate it).

32 comments

  1. Italian immigrants used the ingredients available to them.

    Garlic being one of them.

  2. >Some people say it came with Italian immigrants but it sounds weird to me as I’m from Italy and garlic is not really a thing there (in fact, most people hate it).

    Italian immigrants didn’t care what people in Italy thought of their cooking when they were crammed in tenement housing in New York City.

  4. *Garlic* is too strong and intense?! My god what bland food those people must eat lmao

  8. Wild alliums (garlic onions etc) are plentiful in North America. I would bet our ancestors used what they could forage (it is also coming back as a popular fad and has existed in rural poorer communities in Appalachia since it was settled.) I would attribute it to this. Not sure if Italians used onions or not, but it is the same family as shallots and leeks but garlic is perhaps the most intense (depending on the garlic) so less goes farther. When you’re in survival mode you take the flavorings you can get. Now many of us LOVE it. Not trying to be testy with our Italian friends but our take on Italian recipes is thus unique. Not sure of the settling of Italian immigrants in Appalachia but I think it was likely low. Edit spelling

  9. I can’t imagine someone thinking garlic is overpowering. It’s pretty mild imo

  10. Yeah you have to realize, the Italians that came to America weren’t able to bring all their herbs and spices, they used what was available to them. The same could be said for any mass immigrant group.

  11. Are you a Northern Italian? Most Italian-Americans come from the South and Sicily, where the food is very different from the North.

  12. To ward off European vampires in an effort to preserve our national sovereignty.

  13. It’s not from Italian immigrants

    >William Cobbett, the English author of the American Gardener (1820) noted that “Almost all nations except the English, the Americans, and the French, make great and constant use of Garlick; and, even the French use it, frequently.”[2] Two varieties were in common cultivation during the antebellum period, the large and the small, referring to the size of the bulb, not the stalk.

    >Anglo distaste for garlic began to moderate in the 1850s, largely through the influence of French cookbooks, such as Louis-Eustache Audot’s French Domestic Cookery (1846). In 1857 the notably conservative William White observed, “a very slight, scarcely perceptible flavor, or as the French have it—a soupcon of garlic is not repugnant, but rather agreeable to most tastes.”[3] In the south in became popular as an ingredient in pickling, then, by Spanish and French influence, into the preparation of soups and stews. It was regarded either as a condiment or an ingredient in a composite dish, such as a stew. A southern stewpan had fat trimmings or bacon, an onion, a diced carrot, bay-leaf, garlic, stock & seasoning. Among genteel diners garlic inspired excessive concern for its ability to taint one’s breath. Cookbook writers frequent counseled the substitution of shallots for garlic as a boon to society. In those instance when garlic had to be used, instructions cautioned that it be prepared it in a manner minimizing its potency. The San Francisco master chef John Harder wrote, “Garlic, when used in a salad, should be rubbed on a crust of bread (called chapon). When used for stews and left whole, its flavor will not be strong and penetrating as when mashed or chopped, and gives to the preparation an appetizing and agreeable taste, especially in mutton stews”

    http://www.digitalussouth.org/vegetable/vegetable.php?vegName=Garlic

    Italian immigrants probably ate stuff with garlic in it decided they like the flavor and then added that to their own cuisine.

  14. I know a lot of people have previously mentioned it being related to the region and class of Italian immigration, but my gut feeling is that Asian immigration has had an equally large influence on the amount of garlic we use.

    At least in my family you can chart the amount of garlic used when cooking go up over each generation, and I have a sense that that’s happened as a result of each successive generation having greater exposure to non-European foods and more diverse friends and family.

  15. It comes from our irrational fear of vampires. You see vampires come from Transylvania and that’s relatively close to Russia. So to combat the possible alliance of Russia and Transylvania we began eating garlic. A lot. This would nullify any use of the vampires if we did go to war with Russia, thus keeping our military edge over the commies.

    We all now know that vampires don’t actually exist, but the habit of adding garlic to our food is ingrained into our culture. So now we have an invasion of sweet transvestites from Transsexual, Transylvania. And they DO like garlic.

  17. It was a government initiative by well-known vampire-hunter, Abraham Lincoln. It’s why you don’t see vampires in the US to this day.

  19. Our food culture was heavily influenced by Italian Immigrants and by French cuisine via Julia Child and the influences of French-trained restaurant chefs. We’ve also had a heavy influence especially on the West Coast from Chinese and south Asian cuisine. All of those use garlic pretty liberally. So yeah, we fuckin love garlic and put it everywhere.

  21. Well, I’m Italian. So from there.

    Wait! You’re from Italy and garlic is too strong? My mother born and raised in Italy used garlic with everything.

  22. Most Italian immigrants to the US came from Sicily, where they tend to use more garlic than mainland Italy.

  23. The cuisine in my part of the US is influenced by Indigenous and Spaniard foods and the Spanish use garlic in their dishes, IIRC the anglos are the only ones that dislike garlic since the Italians, French and Spanish all use it heavily

  24. Tldr: Spain. And Europe liked it too, for medicinal reasons and cooking depending on which country, until the French made it unpopular in the 1850s.

    As a cooking ingredient the Spanish were actually the biggest proponents early on but it was picked up all over because there were varieties that grew very easily here. In the more anglo oriented regions like the northeast it was actually used in a bunch of crazy ass home remedies and cures, mostly due to the idea that the smell drove off all sorts of foul things. Hence the whole vampires and garlic bit, yeah? As cultural exchange happened with other areas and superstitions shifted it was around so people started cooking with it.

    Garlic used to be more popular in Europe, such as during the colonial period, but the 1850s were when the French really took off as a major influencer on cuisine and several major figures in that HATED garlic so it lost popularity through most of the continent. At that point we were mostly doing our own thing, though, so we didn’t join the anti-garlic movement for people’s day to day diets.

    The rest, like americanized Italian food using a lot of garlic, is just the fact that we’ve kept eating it and various diasporas incorporated whatever they had access to into their cooking as they arrived.

  25. My family used it a lot when I was growing up. Our background is Slavic. Not 100% sure if our use of it is related.

    It is strange to hear garlic isn’t big in Italy. Certainly you’re likely to smell it in any pizzeria or Italian restaurant here. As you know, “Italian” food is a little different here. Or maybe Italian-Americans just got into it when they got to these shores. Unsure.

    A lot of Italian-descended Americans where I grew up (New Jersey). On holidays you’d walk into one of the houses and this wall – this big wall of garlic and other aromas would bowl you over. You could be stuffed to the point of puking and you were hungry again.

    I use a bulb at a time, just for me, sometimes. I buy it in bulk. I probably use more garlic than most people.

    It is one of my favorite things in the world.

  26. Italian Immigrants, in particular Sicilian Immigrants. Sicilian cuisine uses a lot of garlic, and Sicily is the region a large percentage of our Italian Immigrants came from.

    If you think that Italy does not use a lot of Garlic and that most hate it you must be from northern Italy, because Southern Italy and Sicily use a lot of Garlic.

  27. It came along with several waves of immigrants over the course of a couple hundred years, but when the Italians came (1920’s-ish) is when it really stuck, but I think that has a lot to do with timing.

    Garlic is easy and cheap to grow, which makes it an ideal crop, both during wartime and for people who came over without much to their name. Speaking of war, it was also commonly used to fight infection during both world wars, when penicillin was in short supply. That’s another reason to grow it, become accustomed to it, and have way too much left over when the war ended.

    It was also coming back into style in Europe at the time. Around the 1600’s is when strong flavors like garlic became associated with the lower classes, because aromatics were commonly used to disguise rotten food. So 200-300 years later, that was being forgotten, and people (like the French) were taking old dishes or country dishes and elevating them to fine cuisine. Again, around the 1920’s is when Americans started looking to the French as inspiration for many art forms, including culinary.

    So I would say it was a perfect storm of a lot of factors.

  29. Poland, Germany, and Italy

    Early immigrants from those countries brought it with them and it’s thrived in the United States ever since.

  32. It’s not a love of garlic, it’s an aversion to things like mosquitoes and vampires

    Also it tastes good

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