Onion

The onion appears once in scripture, named in the wilderness complaint of the people Israel as one of the foods they remembered from Egypt.

Remembered from Egypt

In the second year of the wilderness journey, the rabble's craving sets off a wider grumbling. The catalog of foods missed is concrete and specific: "We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic" (Nu 11:5).

The onion stands beside the other staples of an Egyptian diet — fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, garlic — invoked as the contrast to the manna of the wilderness. The text gives no further mention; the single appearance fixes the onion in scripture as part of what the people looked back to rather than forward to.