Cipolla Belendina di Andora

A very large sweet red onion shaped like a flask, up to a kilo. The climate and the alluvial soil of the Merula suit it exactly. Where it came from is not really known; the story in Andora is that it came off the sea early in the 19th century with Settimio Denegri, a young sailor turned farmer from a Turinese family that held a lot of land there. It went into every plot in the district and then declined from the 1960s, partly as building took the fields. It survived through one grower, Trentino Bellenda, born 1926 and known as Trentin, who kept growing it, saved seed and handed it round.