obtained from the cured pods of the plant Vanilla planifolia, is one of the few tropical spices indigenous to the New World, and one of the most popular flavourings worldwide for confectionery and other sweet foods.
V. planifolia, a plant of C. America where it grows wild on the fringes of the Mexican tropical forests, is a vine with thick, fleshy green stems and long leathery leaves. Its small greenish flowers open early in the morning, for at most eight hours, and are pollinated, it is thought, exclusively by humming birds and melipone bees. The fruits—yellow-green pods up to 30 cm (12″) long—develop within four weeks, and it is these, also called ‘beans’, which are harvested and treated to produce the vanilla flavour.
V. tahitensis, which belongs to Tahiti, and is cultivated there and in Hawaii, may be descended from V. planifolia but has noticeably different characteristics. V. pompona is a less important species, yielding ‘West Indian vanilla’.
Vanilla was first used by the Aztecs and its use recorded by the Spanish. Diaz noticed Montezuma drinking tlilxochitl, a drink made from cacao beans flavoured with vanilla; Sahagún, a Franciscan friar who arrived in Mexico in 1529, saw the spice on sale in the markets as an item of Aztec food.
In the second half of the 16th century, the Spaniards imported vanilla beans into Spain and made chocolate flavoured with the spice. Hugh Morgan, apothecary to Elizabeth I, suggested vanilla as a flavouring in its own right and gave some cured beans to the Flemish botanist Clusius who described them in his Exoticorum Libri Decem (1605). Plants were taken to Réunion in 1822 by the French, then to Mauritius in 1827 and to Madagascar in about 1840. But pollination of the vanilla vine is mysterious and only occurs unaided in Mexico—even there only a small percentage of the fruits set naturally. So it was not until Albius, a former slave in Réunion, developed a practical method of pollinating vanilla artificially that commercial cultivation of vanilla became possible. Madagascar, together with the Comoro Islands and Réunion, now produces about 80 per cent of world output of the variety of V. planifolia known as Bourbon vanilla.
Vanilla pods are harvested before ripening and then plunged into hot steam at 70 °C (160 °F) before being left to ferment for up to four weeks. After this time the surface of the fruit will be covered in crystals of glucose and vanillin and the fruits themselves have become black from oxidization but are still flexible. Long and very slim, they are tied in bundles and packed into tin containers. They should keep indefinitely like this and may become covered with small crystals of vanillin. This ‘frosted vanilla’ is especially well esteemed.
Much of the vanilla entering western markets is used for the preparation of vanilla extract, a hydroalcoholic solution which contains the extracted aroma and flavour of vanilla. Pure vanilla extract will be labelled as such and must (by US regulations) contain at least 35 per cent alcohol. That of the finest quality has a low sugar content, a rich perfumed smell, and is an amber colour. It needs to be kept in a dark place. It is always expensive, more so than less good products with labels such as ‘vanilla flavouring’.
Vanillin, the chief flavouring principle, has been the subject of much attention from flavour chemists. The first synthetic vanillin was produced by German chemists in 1874 from coniferin, the glucoside found in the sapwood of certain conifers. Synthetic vanillin can also be produced from other sources such as coal tar extracts. However, although it is chemically pure and can be up to twenty times cheaper than the real thing, it lacks what Rosengarten (1969) described as the ‘pure, spicy delicate flavour’ and the ‘peculiar bouquet’ of natural vanilla; these depend on the conjunction of other flavouring elements with vanillin, and have so far proved to be unreproducible in the laboratory. The use of both extract and flavouring in the food industry as it became a dominant 20th-century flavour through ice-cream, custard, and soft drinks is explained in Ecott (2004).
European take-up of vanilla was long restricted to a flavour enhancer for chocolate and tobacco although there was early use of it in puddings (at least, Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have had a taste for it towards the end of her life). Also, its rarity meant it soon entered the pharmacy, particularly as an aphrodisiac. One 18th-century German claimed that ‘342 impotent men have changed into astonishing lovers of at least as many women’.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Rosengarten, Frederic, Jr (1969), The Book of Spices, Wynnewood, Pa.: Livingston.
Sahagún, Bernardino de (1529), General History of the Things of New Spain: Florentine Codex, repr Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research (1950–82).
