But none is quite as arresting as that of wet garlic, the gentle green scent of the new season's bulbs. This is a subtle smell - light and aromatic, redolent of summer lunches in Italy or Provence.
There is nothing musty or rank, like the plaits of dried garlic that will see us through the winter. And there are few smells that urge me to cook as much as this.
New-season garlic is pretty, too. White, thick skin striped with green, rose or mauve, it is as charming as any baby artichoke or bouquet of herbs.
Just bringing back a head or two with the shopping makes me feel like one of those annoyingly chic Frenchwomen who returns unflustered from the market with just three things in her wicker basket, rather than the average shopper loaded with 17 plastic bags and struggling to put away their loyalty card.
The bulbs of new garlic are fat and unyielding. One long, deep sniff has me heading towards the butcher for young lamb. Tucked around a roasting shoulder, the heads will soften and caramelise, filling the kitchen with the most beckoning smell a cook can produce.
This is the garlic that is white inside, and I think it is the garlic that writers mean when they suggest we eat it raw. And if you slice a peeled young clove so thin that you can see through it, there is no reason why it should not appear on a slice of roasted, peeled and oiled red pepper, or scattered among the crisp leaves of a salad.
Unlike raw dry garlic, which has me doubled up with stomachache, young garlic is mild on the palate and sweet on the breath.
It is this wet garlic that should be minced with ripe peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers to make gazpacho. These pink-skinned cloves are also the ones for halving and rubbing over hot, thick toast as bruschetta.
You see, it is only this early garlic that has any juice to speak of. Smash a particuarly plump clove with the flat blade of a knife and you will see it squirt across the board. Rubbing winter garlic across your toast can leave you wondering why you bothered.
I had tried several times to make aigo bouido, the clear garlic broth that reputedly gets rid of a head cold, but had never been able to get it beyond my lips. I thought it an evil recipe.
But this was because I was using the wrong garlic. Made with fresh, young cloves - three of them crushed with sea salt and simmered with a litre of chicken stock, then poured over a crust of toast drizzled with really good olive oil - proved pleasant enough to eat, yet positively uplifting to the spirit. A purist or a braver cook would have made it with water instead of stock.
Mild, wet garlic is, I suppose, what those French farm workers in sepia photographs appear to be munching for breakfast. Gentle as such young shoots might be, I really cannot see them replacing the grapefruit on my table, no matter how good for my blood.
This is also the garlic for roasting whole. A head can weigh as much as 80g or 100g and yet have only five or six fat, juicy cloves.
Half-a-dozen heads will take a good hour to roast in a very hot oven. The skin will darken and the cloves will sweeten even further. It is immensely satisfying to pop them from their skins. The mellow puree will keep for several days in the fridge, especially if you cover it with a little olive oil and a tight lid.
I have added a spoonful of this dreamy gunge to a cream sauce for pasta (just boil the cream with some of the mashed garlic and a little butter, then toss in the cooked pasta), and I have spread some on toast before adding a layer of grated Parmesan and chucking it under the grill for a minute.
It would be good on a pizza with creme fraiche, fontina cheese and sauteed mushrooms. But the most sensational of all would be to stir the puree into the hot gravy of roast lamb or pork.
There are three lovely recipes this week: a roast garlic puree; a divine, ivory-coloured cream sauce with pan-fried lamb; and a big-flavoured vegetarian meal of roasted summer vegetables and a gutsy dressing. All of them rely on juicy young heads of garlic: you might have to search them out. - Guardian News and Media
