Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Herb guide to Spring Onions along with all the Spring Onions containing recipes presented on this site, with 665 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives information about Spring Onions and a listing of all the Spring Onions-based recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Spring Onions as a major herb flavouring.

Spring onions, Allium cepa (also known as scallions, green onions, salad onions, green shallots, onion sticks, long onions, baby onions, precious onions, or syboes) are edible plants of various Allium species that are 'onion-like' in character and have hollow green leaves and lack a fully-developed bulb. All are members of the Amaryllidaceae (Amaryllis) family).

Spring onions are often used raw as a garnish or flavouring, rather than being cooked (though in many Asian recipes they are lightly stir-fried before use). As a result, spring onions can be considered as an 'herb', which is why they are included in this guide.

In Europe and America, spring onions (scallions) tend to be young (immature) plants of the common onion (Allium cepa var. cepa) and shallot (Allium cepa var. aggregatum). In Asia, spring onions are typically the Welsh onion (Allium fistulosum) which does not form bulbs, even when mature (this is also grown in the West, particularly the Caribbean, exclusively as a spring onion and is known as cive in French).

In terms of taste, spring onions are milder than mature onion bulbs, which accounts for their use as garnishes and in salads or as flavourings for soups and stir-fries. Like onions, the essential oil of spring onions is dominated by sulphur compounds, mainly ethyl and propyl disulfides, vinyl sulfide and other sulfides and thioles. The green leaves of spring onions have a flavour that is reminiscent of chives, but much stronger.

All onion species seem to have originated in Western or Central Asia, though they were naturalized all over Europe by the bronze age.

The English word, 'onion' derives from the late Latin word unio (onion). The names scallion and shallot are related and can be traced back to the ancient Greek askolonion, which, itself, purportedly derives from the Eastern Mediterranean seaport Askalon (modern-day Ashqelon [‫אשקלון‬] in South Western Israel). According to legend, the crusaders discovered the plant there and subsequently introduced it to Europe (however, the city was already famous in antiquity for its onions).