Object: Garlic – Allium sativum

Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion family. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek and chive, all of which were grown in European kitchen gardens since time immemorial. The image shown here, comes from one of the earliest German illustrated herbals: the 1546 Kräuterbuch by Hieronymus Bock.

Dutch settlers coming to New Netherland in addition to kitchen-garden designs and plant lists, took along actual plant samples, with garlic being a natural crop choice, useful both for sustenance and medicine. In the kitchen garlic was used to flavor stews, pottages, salted fish, and preserved foods. Garlic was also a popular medicinal remedy—for infections, digestive complaints, and as a general tonic and must have been used as such in the Kierstede family Apothecary.

Adriaen van der Donck, in the chapter on Tuyn-vruchten or Garden-vegetables in his 1655 Description of New Netherland, mentions garlic among the large varieties of plants that were grown in New Netherland: “some [vegetables] of old are familiar to the Indigenous communities, others come from different quarters, but most are brought here from the Netherlands.”