Welcome back to Foodistory where we cover the history of any food-related topic! The product we will talk about this week is one of our most unique products on earth. Most people might know it as a flavor and not a spice. This is because of the rarity of the actual real product, the market is full of fake extracts, powders, and other frauds.
As the only variety out of 25,000 species of orchid that produces an agriculturally valuable product, this product is literally unique—and it could hardly be more exotic: It’s one of the most complex flavors in existence (with more than 200 flavor compounds), it’s the second-most expensive spice in the world (after saffron, which we have covered a few months ago) and its history is steeped in intrigue, ancient civilizations, piracy, and brutal conquest. This week we are talking about the spice, vanilla.
The History
The reason vanilla has its steep prices ($300 per pound) is the labor intensity of harvesting and growing vanilla, just like saffron. Farmers have to move quickly through snaking vines, seeking out the pale, waxy flowers that bloom just one morning each year. They use thin, pointed sticks to lift the delicate membrane that separates the male and female parts of the flower. With thumb and forefinger, they push the segments into each other to ensure pollination.
Cacao & Vanilla
The work of hand pollination is painstaking, but not new. Long before Europeans took to vanilla's taste, the creeping vine grew wild in tropical forests throughout Mesoamerica. While the Totonac people of modern-day Veracruz, Mexico, are credited as the earliest growers of vanilla, the oldest reports of vanilla usage come from the pre-Columbian Maya.
The Mayan used vanilla in a beverage made with cacao and other spices, which was quickly adopted by the Aztecs after the conquering of the Totanacan empire. This beverage is the oldest known version of chocolate milk named xocolatl.
In Totonac lore, vanilla orchids sprouted from the blood of a runaway deity and her forbidden mortal lover, both of whom were captured and slain by the princess’s father. Hey, if you’ve ever seen the way the vine-like vanilla orchid spreads itself along the limbs of a tree, the story is not that farfetched.
Back to the Aztecs. The Aztecs rode high, reigning over their precious flower—and all of Mesoamerica—until Spanish explorers landed on their shores around 1519. Despite the Spaniards’ obviously hostile intentions, the Aztec emperor Montezuma is said to have offered Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés a traditional goblet of vanilla-infused hot chocolatl. Cortés drank it gladly, managed to acquire the recipe, and proceeded to end Montezuma’s life and dominion.
Off to Europe and USA
Vanilla found its way to Europe where it was cultivated in botanical gardens in France and England but never offered up its glorious seeds as it did in Meso-America. Growers couldn’t understand why until centuries later when, in 1836, Belgian horticulturist Charles Morren reported that vanilla’s natural pollinator was the Melipona bee, an insect that didn’t live in Europe.
Vanilla consumption also took off in the budding United States shortly thereafter, largely thanks to Thomas Jefferson, who was known to add it to his ice cream. Jefferson assembled one of the earliest recipes for vanilla ice cream, now preserved in the Library of Congress. Demand for this new and beguiling flavor spread across the US during the 18th century, and vanilla soon started appearing in domestic cookbooks and in soft drinks like Pemberton’s Coca-Cola.
Green Hands of Albius
Five years later, on the island of Réunion, a 39-mile-long volcanic hotspot in the Indian Ocean, everything changed. In 1841, an enslaved boy on the island named Edmond Albius developed the painstaking yet effective hand-pollination method for vanilla that is still in use today, which involves exposing and mating the flower’s male and female parts. His technique spread from Réunion to Madagascar and other neighboring islands and eventually worked its way back to Mexico to augment the vanilla harvest pollinated by bees.
This proliferation helped whet the world’s appetite for vanilla. The spice quickly found its way into cakes and ice cream, perfumes, and medicines, and was valued for its intoxicating flavor and aroma. But despite growing demand and a robust crop, the tremendous amount of time and energy that went into cultivation and processing affected farmers’ ability to supply the market—and continues to do so today. Nearly all of the vanilla produced commercially today is hand-pollinated with the techniques found by Edmond Albius.
The Modernized Vanilla
Though vanilla’s widespread popularity has turned it into somewhat of a standard commodity, don’t let its ubiquity blind you to its complex and exotic character. In fact, that’s how the whole “plain vanilla” thing got started in the first place. In the same way, a favorite song loses its novelty after being played over and over, vanilla simply became a victim of its own success.