Vanilla

• 1. Introduction

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  Vanilla, the flavor behind countless cakes, ice creams and perfumes, owes its place in the world to a 12-year-old boy on the island of Réunion. His name was Edmond Albius, and he was enslaved. In 1841 he worked out how to pollinate the plant's flowers by hand. That discovery allowed the orchid to be grown far from where it began.

  The spice comes from orchids of the genus Vanilla, mainly the flat-leaved New World species V. planifolia. The part people want is the seed pod. By weight, vanilla is the second-most expensive spice on Earth, behind only saffron. Yet a tiny amount is enough to give a dish its signature flavor and aroma.

  Several questions run through this story. Who first grew vanilla, and how did a plant from Mesoamerica end up on islands in the Indian Ocean? What makes the pods so costly to produce? And why is so much of what carries the name vanilla made from something else entirely?

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• 2. Totonac and Aztec Origins

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  The Totonac people of the eastern coast of Mexico, in the present-day state of Veracruz, were cultivating vanilla on farms since at least 1185. They burned it as a fragrance in temples and carried it as a good-luck charm in amulets. They also used it to flavor food and drink. Few people outside the region knew about any of this, so the cultivation stayed a low-profile affair.

  Before people domesticated it, wild V. planifolia grew around the Gulf of Mexico, from Tampico to the northeast tip of South America. On the Pacific side it grew from Colima to Ecuador, and it was found throughout the Caribbean. The Totonacs are the people most famously linked with vanilla. Still, it is speculated that the Olmecs, who lived in the same wild regions thousands of years earlier, were among the first to cook with it.

  In 1427 the Aztecs of the central highlands of Mexico invaded the Totonacs. They developed a taste for the pods and began flavoring their foods and drinks with them. A favorite mix paired vanilla with cocoa in a drink called xocolatl, which later inspired modern hot chocolate. The Aztecs named the fruit tlilxochitl. That word has been wrongly read as black flower, when the more probable meaning is black pod, because a ripe fruit shrivels and darkens shortly after picking.

  Vanilla probably served a practical purpose in that drink. Sugarcane was not harvested in these regions at the time, and no other sweeteners were available, so vanilla likely tamed the bitter taste of cacao.

  A stranger clue sits far from Mexico. Traces of vanillin were found in wine jars in Jerusalem, used by the Judahite elite before the city was destroyed in 586 BCE. They point to an unidentified Old World species of Vanilla in use in Canaan during the Middle Bronze Age and later.

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• 3. From Chocolate to Ice Cream

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  Hernán Cortés is credited with bringing both vanilla and chocolate to Europe in the 1520s. For decades the pod was seen mostly as an additive to chocolate. That changed in the early 17th century, when Hugh Morgan, a creative apothecary in the employ of Queen Elizabeth I, made chocolate-free, vanilla-flavored sweetmeats.

  By the 18th century the French were using vanilla to flavor ice cream. That habit gave the world the phrase French vanilla. It comes from the French style of making vanilla ice cream on a custard base, using vanilla pods, cream and egg yolks. The term can also simply mean a vanilla-custard flavor. Ice cream stayed the great home of vanilla. As of 2004, around half of the vanilla flavor eaten in the United States went into it.

  The English word arrived in 1754, when the botanist Philip Miller wrote about the genus in his Gardener's Dictionary. It comes from the Spanish vainilla, meaning little pod. That is the diminutive of vaina, which descends from the Latin word for a sheath, a nod to the shape of the pods.

  Europe could taste vanilla long before it could grow it. The first vanilla orchid ever to flower on the continent did so in 1806, in the London collection of the Honourable Charles Greville.

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• 4. The Pollination Puzzle

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  Cuttings from Greville's plant went to the Netherlands and to Paris. From there the French carried the vines to their overseas colonies. The vines grew well but would not bear fruit anywhere outside Mexico.

  The cause lies in the flower. V. planifolia blossoms are hermaphroditic, carrying both male anther and female stigma. A structure called the rostellum sits between the two and makes self-pollination difficult. In the wild in the New World, the only organisms ever seen carrying vanilla pollen are orchid bees of the genus Eulaema. Claims about stingless bees or hummingbirds have never been substantiated, though both visit the flowers. Even within the range of orchid bees, a wild vanilla orchid has only a 1% chance of successful pollination.

  In 1837 the Belgian botanist Charles François Antoine Morren began experimenting with hand pollination of vanilla orchids cultivated in Europe. His method proved financially unworkable and was never used commercially. The technique that finally worked is simple. With a beveled sliver of bamboo, a worker lifts the membrane between anther and stigma. Then, using the thumb, the worker presses the pollinia from the anther onto the stigma. It is still used today.

  Credit took a long time to settle. The noted French botanist and plant collector Jean Michel Claude Richard falsely claimed to have found the technique three or four years earlier. By the end of the 20th century, Albius was considered the true discoverer.

  The work never stops. A flower lasts about one day, sometimes less, and must be pollinated within 12 hours of opening. Generally one flower per raceme opens each day, so a raceme may bloom for over 20 days. A healthy vine can yield about 50 to 100 beans a year. Growers pollinate only five or six of the 20 flowers on each raceme. The first to open are usually the ones chosen, so the beans ripen together, and over-pollination brings disease and poor beans.

  The fruits need five to six weeks to develop and around six months to mature. A new cutting needs three years before it can flower at all.

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• 5. Islands and Farms

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  By 1889, Mexican exports of vanilla exceeded 70,000 kilograms, and Mexico had been the chief producer until the mid-19th century. One of its top regions was Veracruz, especially the town of Papantla. The boom brought trouble. Political shifts forced many farmers who owned vanilla land to pay rent. Protests over those changes led many to fight and die against a four-tier order of Totonac caciques, ranchero clans, a hefty class of landowning labradores, and a bulging stratum of tenants, jornaleros and ranch hands.

  Meanwhile, French entrepreneurs had shipped vanilla fruits to Réunion and Mauritius in 1819, hoping to start production there. Success waited for hand pollination, after which the pods began to thrive. Soon the orchids traveled from Réunion to the Comoros Islands, the Seychelles and Madagascar, along with instructions for pollinating them. By 1898, Madagascar, Réunion and the Comoros produced 200 metric tons of vanilla beans. That was about 80% of the world's production that year.

  In 2023, world production of raw vanilla was 7,433 tonnes. Madagascar supplied 42% of the total and Indonesia 25%. Three major species are grown globally, all descended from a species first found in Mesoamerica. V. planifolia is grown on Madagascar, Réunion and other tropical lands along the Indian Ocean. V. × tahitensis grows in the South Pacific, and V. pompona is found in the West Indies, Central America and South America.

  The name Bourbon vanilla honors Île Bourbon, the former name of Réunion. Despite common confusion, there is no Bourbon whiskey in Bourbon vanilla extract. Mexican vanilla, from the native V. planifolia, is made in much smaller quantity and sold as the vanilla of its homeland.

  Tahitian vanilla has a tangled history. Genetic analysis suggests it is possibly a cultivar from a hybrid of V. planifolia and V. odorata. French Admiral François Alphonse Hamelin brought it to French Polynesia from the Philippines. It had reached the Philippines from Guatemala through the Manila Galleon trade. It makes up less than one percent of vanilla production and is grown by a handful of skilled growers and preparers.

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• 6. Cyclones and Price Swings

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  A tropical cyclone ravaged key croplands in the late 1970s, and the market price of vanilla rose sharply. It stayed high through the early 1980s, even after Indonesian vanilla arrived. In the mid-1980s the cartel that had controlled vanilla prices and distribution since its creation in 1930 disbanded. Prices dropped 70% over the next few years, to nearly US$20 per kilogram.

  In April 2000, tropical cyclone Hudah struck Madagascar, and prices rose sharply again. Political instability and poor weather in the third year compounded the damage. By 2004 the price had reached US$500 per kilogram, which drew new countries into the vanilla industry.

  The spike did not last. A good crop, together with lower demand caused by imitation vanilla, pushed the price down to the $40 range by the middle of 2005. By 2010 it was down to $20 per kilogram. Then cyclone Enawo caused a similar jump to $500 per kilogram in 2017.

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• 7. Harvest and Curing

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  A five-year-old vine can produce between 1.5 and 3 kilograms of pods, and that can climb to 6 kilograms after a few years. Picking them is as demanding as pollinating them. Each fruit ripens at its own time, so harvest happens daily. Immature, dark green pods are left alone. Yellowing at the blossom end is the usual sign of ripeness, but it is unreliable. Glucovanillin, the precursor of vanillin, accumulates from about 20 weeks after pollination and peaks at about 40 weeks.

  To get the finest flavor, each pod is picked by hand just as it begins to split at the end. Overmatured fruits tend to split, which lowers their market value. Commercial value depends on length and appearance. Fruit longer than 15 cm is first quality, and the largest pods, over 16 cm and up to 21 cm, go to top chefs and restaurants. Fruit between 10 and 15 cm is second quality, and anything under 10 cm is third.

  The sap that oozes from cut stems and harvested beans carries a hazard. It contains calcium oxalate crystals, thought to be the main cause of the moderate to severe dermatitis that affects plantation workers.

  Curing turns the green fruit into the dark, fragrant bean. Every method has four steps: killing, sweating, slow-drying and conditioning. Killing stops the pod's growth and disrupts its cells so the enzymes that create aroma can start working. Methods include hot water at 63-65 C for three minutes, or at 80 C for 10 seconds. Others are scratching, freezing, or bundling the fruits in blankets in an oven at 60 C for 36 to 48 hours. Leaving the fruits in sunlight until they turn brown began in Mexico and was practiced by the Aztecs.

  Sweating comes next. Traditionally the fruits are stacked densely and wrapped in wool or other cloth for 7 to 10 days, holding a temperature of 45-65 C. They emerge brown and already smell like vanilla, but they still hold 60-70% moisture by weight. Drying then brings moisture down to 25-30%, over three to four weeks on wooden racks, often with intermittent sun. It is the most problematic stage, because uneven drying can cost some fruits their vanillin before others are done.

  Conditioning means five to six months in closed boxes, where the fragrance develops. The fruits are then sorted, graded, bundled and wrapped in paraffin paper. Cured fruit holds an average of 2.5% vanillin.

  Grading follows no single standard, since each producing country has its own system. The Madagascar system names grades such as Black, TK, Red Fox and Red, with short, split fruits sold as Cuts. Whole, dark, plump, oily pods rank highest and are prized by chefs. The top grade is not necessarily the most flavorful, because grading rewards looks and moisture. Lower grades go into extract and perfume. Under a simplified system for cooks, vanilla extract is normally made from Grade B fruits, which run 10-15 cm.

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• 8. The Imitation Problem

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  Gobley first isolated vanillin from vanilla pods in 1858. By 1874 it had been obtained from glycosides in pine tree sap, which temporarily caused a depression in the natural vanilla industry. The trade has been competing with substitutes ever since. An estimated 95% of products called vanilla are flavored with vanillin made from lignin instead of vanilla fruits.

  Lignin is a natural polymer found in wood. Most synthetic vanillin is a byproduct of the pulp used in papermaking, where sulfites or sulfates break the lignin down. The majority of food-grade vanillin, over 99% pure, is made from guaiacol. Real seedpod extract is a mixture of several hundred compounds, and vanillin is only one of 171 identified aromatic components of real vanilla fruits.

  Cook's Illustrated ran several taste tests of vanilla against vanillin in baked goods. To the editors' consternation, tasters could not tell them apart. Natural vanilla did win in vanilla ice cream. A later, more thorough test by the same group found high-quality artificial flavoring best for cookies. High-quality real vanilla was slightly better in cakes and significantly better in unheated or lightly heated foods.

  Substitutes range further afield. In Paraguay and southern Brazil, the orchid Leptotes bicolor serves as a natural replacement. In 1996 the US Food and Drug Administration cautioned that some vanilla products sold in Mexico were made from the cheaper tonka bean. That bean carries vanillin but also the toxin coumarin, and the agency told consumers to check ingredient labels and avoid suspiciously cheap products.

  The oddest substitute comes from beavers. Castoreum, the exudate from the castor sacs of mature beavers, is approved in the United States as a food additive, often listed only as natural flavoring. It is used especially as vanilla and raspberry flavoring, with total annual US production of less than 300 pounds. Fur trappers use it as a scent lure.

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