A small aioli with vegetables | ©JPS68 / CC-BY-SAWhat’s this?
Everybody knows this famous Provencal garlic mayonnaise, whose name comes from the French word ail (″garlic″) and the Provencal one oli, ″oil″.
People eat it with cold meat, eggs, or a simple piece of bread…
They make the ″big aioli″ 3 times in the year, it’s a special meal for celebrations: we can eat it with boiled cod and eggs, vegetables and snails. Yum!
The little history
In Antic times, people used garlic as a medicine. Pliny said it was good against the consumption.
But garlic had also a bad reputation: those who ate too much could not enter in a temple dedicated to Cybele! Why? Because of the smell, maybe?
In the Middle Ages, people ate plenty of garlic. Especially in Southern France.
They ate a kind of sauce named aillée (made of garlic, almonds, bread and broth).
Medieval recipes suggested ″a garlic sauce with milk″, another sauce made of garlic, ginger and broth… and even a sauce with garlic and mustard. Ancestor of our aioli?