The Core of an Onion: Peeling the Rarest Common Food--Featuring More Than 100 Historical Recipes -- Mark Kurlansky, Hardcover

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cod and Salt, a delectable look at the cultural, historical, and gastronomical layers of one of the world's most beloved culinary staples-featuring original illustrations and recipes from around the world.

As Julia Child once said, "It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions."

Historically, she's been right-and not just in the kitchen. Flourishing in just about every climate and culture around the world, onions have provided the essential basis not only for sautés, stews, and sauces, but for medicines, metaphors, and folklore. Now they're Kurlansky's most flavorful infatuation yet as he sets out to explore how and why the crop reigns from Italy to India and everywhere in between.

Featuring historical images and his own pen-and-ink drawings, Kurlansky begins with the science and history of the only sulfuric acid-spewing plant, then digs through its twenty varieties and the cultures built around them. Entering the kitchen, Kurlansky celebrates the raw, roasted, creamed, marinated, and pickled. Including a recipe section featuring more than one hundred dishes from around the world, The Core of an Onion shares the secrets to celebrated Parisian chef Alain Senderens's onion soup eaten to cure late-night drunkenness; Hemingway's raw onion and peanut butter sandwich; and the Gibson, a debonair gin martini garnished with a pickled onion.

Just as the scent of sautéed onions will lure anyone to the kitchen, The Core of an Onion is sure to draw readers into their savory stories at first taste.

Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 11/07/2023
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.83lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.70w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781635575934

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2022 pg. 21
Library Journal 06/01/2023 pg. 21
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2023
Booklist 10/15/2023 pg. 8
Publishers Weekly 10/30/2023
Foreword 10/27/2023

About the Author
Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times-bestselling and James Beard Award-winning author of The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing, Cod, Salt, Milk!, Havana, The Big Oyster, The Basque History of the World, and Salmon, among other titles. He has received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Bon Appétit's Food Writer of the Year Award, and the Glenfiddich Award. He lives in New York City. www.markkurlansky.com