Ask Professor Produce

Recently I watched the 1954 French movie Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Hands Off the Loot) at the Oak Street Cinema. In it one of the characters says something about "going out for onion soup," after a long night out with his friend and their girlfriends. Are French people so crazy about onion soup they go out for it in the middle of the night? I can't find reference to this anywhere—any ideas?

I was drawn to your question as a fellow admirer of French cinema, but more importantly, as a confirmed lover of French Onion Soup. Although a comforting, steaming bowl of onion soup does seem to me a perfectly wholesome way to end a late night of revelry—this reference you quote is actually a shocking allusion to the more risqué aspects of onion culture.

As this is a family publication, I can only peel back but the most superficial of layers on this particular onion—but you should know that the onion has been considered an aphrodisiac for as long as people have been recording history. Roman emperors and Greek scholars were moved to write about the onion's effective enhancement of libido; while far to the east, onion and members of its family were included in soups to increase virility and sexual health in men and women alike. Anywhere you could find onion, people were reporting it to have rather stimulating effects. Those in the priesthood or in celibate monastic traditions avoided it religiously—so to speak—and as to the French, why, of course they embraced the onion completely and created a soup based entirely on it.

The science of Aphrodisiacs is often in dispute—sometimes a rumored aphrodisiac merely has sensual properties that are suggestive, but occasionally scientists are able to isolate particular chemical compounds in foods that have romantic effects upon us—a familiar example of this is the "love-simulating" compounds in chocolate. With onions, there is one variety of onion in particular that has gained a lot of attention in the scientific community—and that is the Red Tropea onion, grown in the Tropea region of Italy. This onion contains small amounts of nitric oxide (NO)—which is a potent little molecule that dilates blood vessels in smooth muscle tissue (that is, muscles that we cannot willfully flex). This compound is also found in pharmaceutical drugs, most notably for this article's purposes, the infamous Viagra.

For the record, you didn't ask about all this—but I will tell you anyway that the Wedge has never carried the Tropea onion, as a genuine Tropea onion must be grown in Italy. We do, however, occasionally sell its North-American counterpart, the "Red Torpedo onion." These are usually available as a spring onion, fresh with greens still attached. They have also been, albeit less frequently, available in a cured (dry-skinned) version. At the time of this writing, the closest thing we have to this onion is probably a shallot. Which, I might add, actually makes a divine onion soup.

As to the exact quote in your French film—it is an old French custom to feed newlyweds onion soup for breakfast, to restore their libido. My guess would be he's making a reference to either winding up married, or otherwise depleted, by the end of their late-night activities.