Apr 27 2007
Garlic from the hedgerow
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Hedge Garlic (Alliara petiola) is one of the earliest fresh spring greens of the hedgerow, its bright green garlicky leaves appearing from February and at their best as the plant flowers in April and May.
Otherwise known as garlic mustard or Jack-by-the-hedge, it has a more delicate, but nonetheless distinctly oniony, aroma and flavour than the better known wild garlic or ramsons (Allium ursinum).
Much of the flavour is lost in cooking but it holds its own in a salad. As well as the leaves, the young flowers are edible and particularly attractive.
John Evelyn, in his Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets (1699) - (UK)
Jack-by-the-Hedge … has many Medicinal Properties, and is eaten as other Sallets, especially by Country People, growing wild under their Banks and Hedges.
Evelyn knows the herb also as sauce-alone, for hedge garlic works well as a garnish and in uncooked sauces.
Richard Mabey’s Food for Free gives a simple but delicious recipe for a sauce for lamb along the lines of mint sauce - just finely chopped hedge garlic (with a little hawthorn and mint) mixed with vinegar and sugar.
Like both garlic and mustard (though it’s not related to either), hedge garlic is highly versatile in the kitchen. Roger Phillips reports that it was once often matched with mutton, salt fish, bacon and herrings.
Essential Reading
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Wild Food (Natural History Photographic Guides) by Roger Phillips (UK)  (US)
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Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets by John Evelyn (UK) (US)
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Food for Free by Richard Mabey (UK)  (US)
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We had some wild garlic in at college the other day, which was made into a light, creamy sauce for a starter pasta dish on the Brasserie menu. One of the second year students I was supervising told me he’d never heard of the stuff before, and was very keen to try the delicate leaves. He was very impressed, and we ended up chewing on thse wonderful leaves all through service. I love the “raw onion/chive” kind of spiciness of the edible flowers, plus they make for a rather elegant garnish
I’m going to look for this in my local hedgerows! I’ve only had the more usual ‘wild garlic’ type with the longer smooth leaves.
We had it a year or so ago in a warm mayonnaisey type of sauce (same as mayo but made with warm olive oil) with some fried fish if I remember rightly - really good - and the flowers made a pretty and tasty addition to the salad to follow.
It looks like nettles. I’m going to get stung trying to identify this one…
Scott - you are thinking of dead nettle which looks like stinging nettle but doesn’t sting. My dad tells me that when he was young, schoolboys used to pick off the flowers and brush the resulting plant across the faces of schoolgirls to make them scream. His excuse is that it was a very long time ago - just after World War II!
I looked this up on the web and I’m convinced that they are different plants, although I can’t identify this one. It’s not wild garlic and it’s not dead nettle.
It is very interesting to grow this plant in rich garden soil. Cultivated plants are different in taste an texture.