Garlic Oil

Garlic Oil
The essential oil of garlic can be recovered by steam distillation of the freshly crushed cloves, the yielding being 0.1 to 0.2%.

Garlic oil is a powerful flavoring agent and is widely used in seasonings either as a liquid flavor or dispersed as a dry-carrier.

Many problems arise when fresh garlic is included in a food product.

The commercially-available vegetable occurs as a compound bulb made up of 10 to 14 small “cloves” encased in a tough outer skin.

The bulb must first be cleaned and sorted, the outer tissues removed and the cloves separated. The garlic is then ready for mincing, cutting or crushing.

The whole process is tedious and the manufacturing department becomes permeated with the smell.

This can give rise to the problem of cross-contamination unless great care is taken.

Like all other natural products, the flavoring effect of fresh garlic is variable whereas that of garlic oil is relatively consistent.

It is not surprising, therefore, that garlic oil is now widely used in place of the fresh vegetable.

To overcome the objectionable odor associated with both fresh garlic and garlic oil, the use of an encapsulated garlic oil is strongly recommended.

This dry powder is almost free of odor and does not release its contents until the capsule is broken down by admixture with water.
Garlic Oil

Garlic

Garlic
Botanically name Allium sativum, L. Because of their attractive flavor and acknowledged medicinal properties the bulb or “cloves” of garlic have been used in the cuisine of most Mediterranean countries since the dawn of history.

Like onions the entire cloves are almost without odor but once cut or bruised they produce an intensity strong and characteristics odor which too many is obnoxious.

The chemistry of the compounds responsible for the garlic profile is similar to the found in onion. The differences are attributed to qualitative and quantitative differences in the precursors present; the active ingredients being primarily allyl (2-propenyl) sulfides together with much smaller amounts of methyl and 1-prophykl compounds.

The flavor of onion and garlic is complementary the former being mild and sweet whereas the latter is harsh and insistent, because of its relatively high flavoring power, garlic is frequently blended with onion in order to increase the initial impact of the onion but this can only be done to a very limited extent as garlic is quickly recognizable as such and its flavor associations are not always acceptable.

If garlic is incorporated into an end product which is to be distributed in a container such as a screw capped bottle or jar, the head space above the product nearly always has a higher proportion of the garlic odor.

This may be detectable as such and detract from the product even though the product itself may not contain a sufficient level of garlic to be noticeable when the product is consumed.
Garlic