From the earliest times garlic has been used as a food. It formed part of the diet of the Israel in Egypt (Numbers 11:5) and of the labourers employed by Khufu (pharaoh) in constructing the Great Pyramid of Giza. Garlic is still grown in Egypt, but the Syria variety is the kind most esteemed now .

It was consumed by the ancient Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome soldiers, sailors and rural classes, and, according to Pliny the Elder (Pliny the Elder xix. 32), by the Africa peasantry. Galen eulogizes it as the "rustic's theriac", and Neckam Alexander , a writer of the 12th century (see Wright's edition of his works, p. 473, 1863), recommends it as a Palliative of the heat of the sun in field labor.

In his Natural History Pliny gives an exceedingly long list of scenarios in which it was considered beneficial. Dr. T. Sydenham valued it as an application in confluent Smallpox, and, says Cullen, found some Dropsy cured by it alone. Early in the 20th century, it was sometimes used in the treatment of pulmonary Tuberculosis or Phthisis.

Garlic was rare in traditional British cuisine (though it is said to have been grown in England before 1548), and has been a much more common ingredient in Mediterranean Europe. Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads, as a supper for Hecate (Theophrastus, Characters, The Superstitious Man); and according to Pliny, garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. (Pliny also states that garlic de-magnetizes Loadstone, which is not factual.) The inhabitants of Pelusium in lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have had an aversion to both onions and garlic as food.

To prevent the plant from running to leaf, Pliny (N.H. xix. 34) advised bending the stalk downward and covering with earth; seeding, he observes, may be prevented by twisting the stalk (by "seeding", he most likely means the development of small, less potent bulbs).