Toum, olive oil and the seed-oil question

The version documented by Lebanese American cook Maureen Abood combines garlic, oil, lemon juice and salt, without eggs. It is an emulsion: the ingredients become a cohesive sauce through careful processing and gradual oil addition. Her contemporary recipe favours a neutral oil so garlic can lead the flavour. That is evidence of a living culinary practice, not a certificate of ancient origin.^[1]

Sohla El-Waylly’s technique reference likewise uses neutral oil, with lemon juice and water added during processing. It also describes egg white as a way to rescue a broken batch. That rescue changes the ingredient list. A cook serving such a version should say that it contains egg rather than allowing diners to assume every garlic sauce is the same.^[2]

Sesame is the important counterexample. Archaeobotanical research discusses sesame remains from Mesopotamia around 2300 BCE, while noting how poorly its small, oily seeds can survive charring. Written evidence and physical remains do not always appear in the same abundance. A gap in recovered seeds is not proof that people had no sesame.^[3]

A study of crop introductions in the southern Levant records sesame in Iron Age contexts and discusses later textual evidence for cultivation in Syria. These are regional and chronological observations, not proof that a particular Lebanese garlic sauce contained sesame oil. They do establish why “all seed oils are modern” is too broad a claim.^[4]

Sunflower is native to North America. North Dakota State University’s agricultural history describes its movement to Europe after contact with the Americas and its later development as an important oil crop in Russia. It does not belong in a reconstruction of an ancient Phoenician pantry.^[5]

Canola is much more recent as a named crop. The Canola Council’s chronology records the first registered “double-low” variety in 1974 and the adoption of the canola name in 1978. Its rapeseed ancestors are older. Crop ancestry, a particular bred variety, oil extraction and modern refining are separate histories; collapsing them into one date produces confusion.^[6]

These timelines do not tell us the year Lebanese households switched oils, or even that everyone made the same switch. That would require household accounts, shop records, manufacturers’ archives, dated recipes and interviews. Price, availability, equipment and preferred flavour are useful questions to investigate, not causes we can simply declare proven.

Abood explains that olive oil brings colour and a stronger flavour that can become bitter in her preparation. A neutral oil makes a paler sauce and leaves more space for garlic. This is a culinary difference, not a ranking of the cooks or families who prefer one version.^[1]

If you want to explore an olive-oil version, describe it that way. Compare the oil’s aroma and the finished sauce’s colour, intensity and texture. A deliberately olive-tasting garlic sauce may be exactly what you enjoy. What the tasting cannot do is prove that it recreates the first toum ever made. A plausible older ingredient is not the same thing as a surviving old recipe.

Our editorial approach is to name the preparation precisely. A garlic-and-oil emulsion, a sauce thickened with potato or starch, and an egg-containing garlic sauce should not be presented as interchangeable. Neither should a present-day household tradition be dismissed merely because its cook uses a food processor or a recently available oil.

“Traditional Lebanese toum made with neutral oil” and “an olive-oil interpretation” tell a reader more than “the only authentic toum”. For an historical reconstruction, add a period and a source. For a family recipe, identify the family practice when you have permission and testimony. We do not have to manufacture a Phoenician origin to take garlic sauce seriously.