Origin of onions and garlic

From Transcendental Diary by Hari-sauri Prabhu
December 22 1976 – Poona
The Malhotras are the owners of Weikfield Products food company, which was
established twenty years ago. They have a very large modern house, Malhotra
Bhavan, situated on several acres of well kept land at 116 Koregaon Park,
which, unusual for India, even has a moderately sized swimming pool. At the
house Srila Prabhupada was introduced to the wives of all three brothers,
and some of their children.
As I busied myself retrieving Srila Prabhupada’s silver plate and bowls for
breakfast from our bags in the car, Haridäsa escorted His Divine Grace into
the house. A few minutes later he came out grinning and told me of an
unusual story Srila Prabhupada had narrated to our hosts. The ladies had
naturally inquired from Srila Prabhupada what would he like to eat, and his
initial response was to say “anything.” He declared he would be satisfied
with whatever they wanted to offer. But then he added, as a precaution, that
there should be no onions or garlic. They knew this to be one of our
standards, but still they were inquisitive to know why.
Prabhupäda said with a smile that eating onion and garlic is as bad as
eating cow’s flesh. And he told them a story about a Muslim king, a cow and
a brähmana.
For the Muslims, cow slaughter is a regular affair. This particular king
however, before having the cow slaughtered would call a brähmana and the
brähmana would offer prayers to the effect that “In this life these people
are slaughtering you, but in the next life you will get the chance to
slaughter them.”
So one time a brähmana came there but he felt lusty and he wanted to eat
the cow’s flesh also. However, the system was that he was not allowed to see
the slaughter going on, he was supposed to offer his prayers and then leave.
So he hid in a corner and witnessed the butchering. After the Muslims had
all taken their share of the dead cow and departed, the brähmana came to
that spot and he found an ankle of the cow. Because he was not supposed to
eat any meat, he took the cow’s ankle into the forest and buried it with the
plan that he would return in the night, cook it and eat it. When he came
back he dug out the cow’s ankle and found to his great surprise that it had
turned into onion and garlic.
Haridäsa said that Prabhupäda told the Malhotras that the cow’s hoof
transformed to garlic and the ankle became onion; garlic looks like a cow’s
hoof, and just as the cow’s ankle has several layers of flesh similarly the
onion has several layers and is the color of flesh. He finished the
narration by telling them that when you eat garlic it makes a bad smell come
in your mouth and when you cut onion it makes tears come out of your eyes.
The tears come because the cow was crying that in Kali yuga even the
brähmana wants to eat onion. The family loved the story and promised not to
serve any onions and garlic.