Vanilla. Sweet, aromatic, smooth, exotic, there are many words used to describe one of the world's most popular flavorings. Vanilla is a main ingredient in ice creams, baked goods, and other desserts, as a flavor enhancer in many savory foods like salads, meats, and pastas, as well an enhancer of aroma and complexity in drinks like wine and scotch. Forget the notion that vanilla is a bland and unexciting flavor found only in ice creams and explore new uses for
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The Origins of Vanilla
Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) is one of the most well-known, widely-used flavorings in the world. An orchid originally native to Mexico, vanilla is the only one of the nearly 22,000 species of orchid that produces an edible food.
Most historians credit the Totonac and Aztec people of Mexico with cultivating the first vanilla beans. Vanilla was highly revered by the native Mexican Indians and was even used as currency by some of these people. The vanilla bean was first brought to Europe by Columbus and Spanish explorers who almost immediately saw its value as a flavoring.
Until about halfway through the 1800s, vanilla was grown and harvested almost exclusively in Mexico. However, at around this time, some French businessmen sent some vanilla to Reunion and Mauritius islands with the hope of cultivating vanilla there. Vanilla quickly spread after this and by the turn of the century, almost 80% of the world's vanilla came from the islands of Madagascar, Reunion, and Comoros.
Today, although the majority of vanilla still comes from the island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa, vanilla is grown all over the world. Indonesia, the Philippines, Guatemala, Tahiti, Fiji, New Guinea, and China all produce vanilla. Mexico, the birthplace of vanilla and once the world's leading producer, now accounts for only about 10% of the world's production.
Producing Vanilla: From the Vine to your Kitchen
When purchasing vanilla, many are struck by the relatively expensive price tag of just a couple vanilla beans. If more people understood the arduous process involved with growing, pollinating, picking, and curing vanilla, perhaps they would not be so surprised. Vanilla pods, or beans as they are called, take anywhere from six months to one year to fully develop and blossom. Once they do blossom, however, the work really begins. Because the vanilla pod is naturally pollinated only by one very specific type of bee that is native only to Mexico, each individual vanilla pod must be pollinated by hand. Given that a typical vanilla plantation can grow literally tens of thousands of vanilla pods and that the vanilla often grows high up in trees out in forests where it can be accessed only with a ladder, it is easy to see just how difficult this task can be. In addition to this, vanilla beans have a window of only about 12 hours where they can be pollinated or else they become useless.
Assuming everything goes well and the growers are able to pollinate and harvest their vanilla crop, the next stage of production is curing the vanilla. Curing is essentially a five stage process: killing the bean to stop further vegetative growth, sweating the bean to facilitate enzyme changes which give vanilla its distinctive taste and aroma, drying the vanilla to remove moisture and lock in the vanilla's flavor, and conditioning the vanilla pod to enhance aroma and refine its flavor. curing vanilla beans can take up to another six months, depending on the growing region. After curing, vanilla beans are sorted based on quality (generally having to do with the size of the pod), bundled, and shipped all over the world. Here, vanilla beans are turned into extract (using a process similar to distillation), vanilla powder, vanilla paste, or are packaged and sold as whole beans.
Types of vanilla
There are generally considered to be three standard types of vanilla in the world:
Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla: The most widely-grown and produced type of vanilla, Madagascar Bourbon vanilla gets its name from the region it is grown. Madagascar, an island off the coast of Africa, is the world's single largest producer of vanilla and Bourbon, which refers to the Bourbon Islands (not the Kentucky whiskey) where vanilla is also widely cultivated. Madagascar Bourbon vanilla has a sweet, mellow flavor that is excellent for all uses.
Mexican Vanilla: Mexico, the birthplace of vanilla, still produces an excellent crop that is well-known for its robust, complex, and spicy flavor. Although, Mexico produces a much smaller crop than the rest of the world, Mexican vanilla is still an excellent vanilla that is perfect for applications where vanilla is the primary flavor such as desserts, ice creams, and baked goods. One note of caution, take care when purchasing Mexican vanilla extract that is produced in Mexico and sold by unscrupulous companies as it often contains extracts of the Tonka bean, a bean which produces a chemical that is banned by the FDA. Whole Mexican vanilla beans, however, are not a concern and nor are Mexican vanilla extracts produced by reputable companies.
Tahitian Vanilla: Tahitian vanilla is one of the most highly sought-after vanillas in the world due to its highly pungent, floral aroma, delicate taste, and relatively low supply. Tahitian vanilla is actually its very own species of vanilla, Vanilla tahitiensis, a mutation of the more common Vanilla planifolia, that is produced exclusively on the small island of Tahiti. Tahitian vanilla is also the far more expensive of the three types of vanilla due to its high demand and low supply.
That's right, vanilla is widely thought to have medicinal properties and has actually been used for centuries to treat a variety of common ailments such as fever, infections, hyperactivity, tooth decay, and more. Vanilla is an antioxidant which means it has the potential to eliminate harmful free radicals from the body. vanillin, one of the active compounds in vanilla is right now being researched as a possible treatment for sickle cell anemia. Perhaps the most popular medicinal uses for vanilla are its aphrodisiac properties, thought to increase libido and virility. Interestingly, vanilla is also now known to increase catecholamines in the human body (including epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline), which makes it mildly addictive.
