Onion Essential oil Egypt

The onion is a biennial, perennial plant used as a vegetable with an unmistakable flavor seen as essential in many culinary cultures. Its tunicate, edible bulb takes on a variety of colors and shapes and puts forth hollow, cylindrical, pointed leaves. The scape is also hollow and is topped with an exquisite, spherical umbel made up of small, purple flowers that can only be produced after a cold period. When the plant is rubbed or crushed, it gives off a sulfureous odor characteristic of the allium family, which includes leeks. The essential oil obtained from the bulbs through steam distillation is sulfureous, pungent, and powerful.

The onion, native to Central Asia, has a wild ancestor that still grows near the mountains between Iran and Turkmenistan. The onion as we know it today was apparently introduced to the southern Mediterranean by the Akkadians kings of Mesopotamia in conquests of war earlier than 2,300 B.C. Although documentary evidence for this era is rare, bas-reliefs and tomb remains show the presence of the onion in ancient Egypt. Being a sacred plant to the Egyptians, the onion was not consumed at that time. It is also mentioned in the Bible. Onion cultivation, well-established in southern France, expanded northward  during the Middle Ages.

Advised uses : Aromatherapy, Perfumery, Cosmetic, Alimentary