To All,
Basics
Orchids are celebrated for their intricate beauty and their appeal as corsages, but the only foodstuff provided by the more than 25,000 species in the orchid family, which is the largest family in the plant kingdom, is the flavoring vanilla [Ecott, p. 1, Cameron, p. 28]. Several members of the genus Vanilla, which contains more than a hundred species [Cameron, pp. 41, 175-88], contain the flavoring, but the species that provides almost all of the commercial vanilla [Ecott. pp. 20, 27] is Vanilla planiform, which we will simply call the vanilla plant. The flavoring is extracted from the vanilla plant's fruit, which is informally called a pod or a bean; in this e-mail we call it a bean.
Vanilla is the diminutive of the Spanish word vaina, which means pod or sheath, so "vanilla" translates roughly as "little pod." If we go further back to Latin, "vanilla" ultimately comes from "vagina," which means sheath (Ecott, p. 23). Orchids are awash in sexual terminology; "orchis" means "testicle" in Greek.
Vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron. This is because, as explained below, vanilla is highly labor-intensive. Vanilla can go for $250 per pound, and armed guards must sometimes be used in the jungle to guard the crop [Ecott. p. 2]. (The claim that vanilla is the second most expensive spice is repeated everywhere. This is enough to make one doubt the claim. I have not seen a proof.) Despite this high cost, vanilla is so highly valued for its flavor and aroma that it is widely used not only in commercial and domestic baking but also in beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, home fragrance products,and other uses [Medina et al., pp. 1, 20-21, 25].
Though in common speech "vanilla" is often used to signify blandness, this is a grotesquely unfair canard since vanilla has a strong taste and smell. If you doubt this last statement, open a bottle of vanilla extract and take a whiff. As Cameron [p. 7] states:
The word vanilla has become synonymous with plain, boring, white, common, ordinary, and flavorless. Vanilla, however, is one of the most exotic, rare, expensive, intense, and popular of all flavors and fragrances.
Flying below the radar, vanilla is said to be the world's most popular spice [Cameron p. 8] and is used in one-third of the ice cream products sold in the U.S. In addition to being what the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization calls "one of the world's most popular flavors" [Medina et al., p. 24], as Cook's Illustrated says,"Vanilla is a powerful 'flavor potentiator,' meaning it enhances our ability to taste other foods including chocolate, coffee, fruit, and nuts, and boosts our perception of sweetness." In fact, vanilla is essential to establishing the identifiable flavor profiles of a wide range of commercial food products [Ecott, p. 210].
Recall from the diagram of the process of making chocolate in the e-mail of 16 May 2015 that vanilla is a standard ingredient in chocolate. In fact, at least since the time of the Aztecs vanilla has "tamed the bitter taste of chocolate" [Cameron, p. 8]. I inspected a Hershey bar and found its ingredients to be: sugar, milk, chocolate, cocoa butter, lactose, milk fat, soy lecithin, PGPR, vanillin. (Compare this dog's breakfast of ingredients to the minimal ingredients in the Trader Joe's chocolate bar (16 May 2015): cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa powder, and soy lecithin.) Also, vanilla is a standard ingredient in chocolate ice cream, as can be verified by inspecting a carton of Ben & Jerry's. These products should be called a chocolate-vanilla bar and chocolate-vanilla ice cream, but vanilla, self-effacing as always, allows chocolate to reap the plaudits. It is modesty like this that has given vanilla its undeserved reputation for blandness.
The Vanilla Plant: How it Grows and How it is Tended
The vanilla plant evolved in Central America and southeastern Mexico [Ecott, p. 20], and it was first cultivated in Mexico in pre-Columbian times in what is now the state of Veracruz. It is not common in the wild [Ecott, p. 27]. Most vanilla is grown within 10 or 20 degrees of the equator.
The vanilla plant is a vine that can climb to a height of more than a hundred feet; it requires a tree or some other support on which to grow.Tendrils anchor the vine to the support, which is called a tutor. Farmers use various strategies for handling the vanilla vine.
- In nature the vanilla vine typically grows up a tree (see the first four pictures below). This approach is used on a vanilla farm in Papantla, Mexico (see fifth picture), the traditional home of fine vanilla; these vines are growing on trees in the legume family that provide support, shade, mulch, and nitrogen for the soil [Cameron, pp. 145-46, pl. 110]. A problem with this approach is that the flowers and fruits can be out of convenient reach.
- More modern vanilla farms tend to use a system of vertical and horizontal supports so that the vine does not grow too high; this makes it possible to pollinate the flowers by hand and pick the beans by hand. The vines might grow up and down, or they might grow up and then horizontally [Cameron, pp. 145-46]. The first picture [Cameron, pl. 112] shows bamboo vertical supports and wooden horizontal supports. The second picture [Cameron, pl. 113] shows stone vertical supports and wire horizontal supports. The last picture shows a vanilla farm on Hawaii that is (or was) for sale for $1.25 million. How does that sound as a retirement activity? In all of these pictures you can see the netting that provides the shading that vanilla requires. You don't want your vanilla to get sunburned [Medina et al., p. 9].
The vanilla flower is about two inches wide, including the sepals, which are the green, petal-like structures that cover the flower when the flower bud is closed and then spread when the bud opens. The tubular flower is about an inch long. The flower has little [Ecott, p. 1] or no scent. The drawings show the tendril at the base of each leaf that holds the vine to the support; these tendrils can be more than 20 inches long [Cameron, p. 31].
The flower, like all flowers in the orchid family, is complex. In fact, the unusual structure of the flower means that very few natural pollinators exist. All over the Internet are various statements about what pollinates the vanilla flower, and there are even videos that purport to show pollination, but the actual current state of knowledge is that no scientist has ever observed any creature carrying pollen to or from a Vanilla planiform flower [Cameron. p. 152]. Therefore, I will skip over the various conjectures and suggestive observations of other species of Vanilla and just say that we don't know how vanilla plants are naturally pollinated in the wild [Cameron, pp. 151-56].
It is known that the vanilla flower lasts only one day and must be pollinated between 4:00 a.m. and noon if a fruit is to be produced; the chance of a fruit resulting is maximized if the flower is pollinated around 8:00 a.m.. It is also known that that natural pollination is very inefficient. As Wikipedia states,"In the wild, there is less than 1% chance that the flowers will be pollinated, so in order to receive a steady flow of fruit, the flowers must be hand-pollinated when grown on farms." This means that the vanilla farmer must check the flowers every day to see if they are open, and if they are, then the farmer must hand-pollinate them. This is one reason why vanilla is so labor-intensive and, hence, so expensive. Children are especially well-suited to hand-pollination because of their small fingers; since pollination must be done in the morning, this leads to high truancy rates [Medina et al., p. 27]. To summarize commercial practice, in the Old World vanilla flowers must be hand-pollinated because there are no natural pollinators; in the New World, vanilla flowers must be hand-pollinated because natural pollinators are so scarce.
We have seen that the navel orange is self-incompatible (27 Mar 2015), i.e., a navel orange tree cannot be fertilized by its own pollen. If a navel orange flower is not fertilized, then it produces a fruit but no seed. In contrast, a vanilla plant is self-compatible and can pollinate itself. For vanilla, "If the flower is cross pollinated, as often done by insects, the seeds are viable, and can produce further generations of viable offspring. If the flower is self-pollinated, however, it produces only sterile seeds." The last few sentences are summarized in the table below; this gives a hint of the extremely wide variation in the field of plant reproductive biology. The vanilla flower has a membrane called the rostellum that separates the male and female parts; this is what makes sure that self-pollination in the wild does not occur. In short, self-pollination is no good for propagation in the wild and is prevented by the structure of the flower, but it's just fine for farming since for purposes of flavor the sterile seeds are as good as the viable seeds.
Effect of Type of Fertilization on Fruit and Seed Production
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Unfertilized
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Self-fertilized
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Cross-fertilized
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Navel Orange
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Fruit with no seeds
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Not allowed
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Fruit with viable seeds
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Vanilla
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No fruit
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Fruit with sterile seeds
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Fruit with viable seeds
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In the 16th century the conquistadors discovered the Mexicans cultivating vanilla, and they quickly appreciated its value. When it was taken to other countries, the plant would grow and produce flowers, but, to the consternation of the imperialists, it did not produce fruit since the only insects that pollinated vanilla were back in Mexico. Therefore, for 300 years after Europeans became aware of vanilla, Mexico had a monopoly on it.
It was a major event in the history of vanilla when in 1841 Edmond Albius, a twelve year-old slave who lived on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, where French entrepreneurs in 1819 had taken vanilla, worked out a practical way to hand-pollinate vanilla flowers. Albius discovered that a bamboo sliver (or toothpick in the modern age) could be used to lift the rostellum out of the way so that the pollen could be moved from the anther (the male part that bears the pollen) to the stigma (the female part that accepts the pollen). This made it possible for vanilla plants to be cultivated wherever climatic conditions were suitable. To see hand pollination of vanilla flowers, you can watch this video from about 2:12 to the end; this video is shot in Africa and focuses largely on entertainment. Alternatively, you can watch this video shot in an American greenhouse; it is more detailed and gives a better sense of exactly what hand pollination entails. For close-up still pictures, see this site.
I have included a couple of pictures that illustrate the anatomy of the vanilla flower; you will need to use your imagination since these two-dimensional cuts don't fully convey how the solid membrane of the rostellum serves as an impassable barrier that separates the anther from the stigma. The next picture [Ecott, p. 183] shows a schematic representation of the Edmond Albius technique for hand pollination, which is still used by probably every vanilla farm in the world, and the last two pictures show the vanilla flower being hand-pollinated.
The vine starts producing fruit when it is about ten feet long. The fruit appears soon after pollination but then remains on the vine for six to nine months while it matures. Outwardly it resembles a small, slim banana, or an extra-long green bean; each bean is roughly a third of an inch in diameter and six inches long. The beans on a plant do not ripen synchronously but at their own times. To get the finest flavor, each individual bean must be picked by hand as soon as it begins to split at the end. (For other hints on when and how to pick, see Medina et al. [pp. 17, 26].) The required inspections of the ripening beans and hand-harvesting is very labor-intensive and is the second reason why vanilla is so expensive. Inside of these beans is an oily liquid full of tiny seeds. After being picked, the beans have no flavor or smell; they must be processed to bring out the flavor, as discussed below.
It is important to realize that the flowers grow in clusters, but only one flower in a cluster is open at a time. If you look back at some of the flower pictures, mostly you see unopened buds and a few senescent flowers. (What in some pictures looks like two flowers in a cluster being open at the same time is actually two overlapping clusters.) There are typically about twenty flower buds in a cluster, and sometimes up to a hundred. If numerous flowers in the same cluster are successfully pollinated as they open over a period of time, then the result is the cluster of beans that you see in the pictures of the fruit. A rough rule of thumb is to pollinate no more than six flowers in a cluster and no more than thirty on a vine; pollinating more might overtax the plant and lead to inferior beans, to the vine not flowering the next year, or to making the plant susceptible to disease [Cameron, 154-56, Medina et al., p. 42].
This series of e-mails has not previously focused on a plant that climbs. In general, there are two mechanisms that climbing plants can use to keep from falling down [Cameron, pp. 101, 132, 146]. First, a plant can twine around its support. For example, see the drawing below of the field bindweed, which is a common twining vine in New England in the morning glory family. Vanilla vines do not twine, as you can see from various pictures above. Second, a plant can use tendrils to wrap around or adhere to the support. Vanilla vines have a tendril accompanying each leaf, though it often dies or is otherwise lost; you can clearly see this tendril in some of the drawings above. If the support is thin, the vanilla tendrils will repeatedly wrap around the support, as in the second picture below. If the support is thick, the vanilla tendrils will adhere to the support; you can see a close-up of such a tendril to the right of the lower leaf in the third picture below. Also, in the fourth picture you can see the tendrils above the bottom three leaves on the right. (The pictured plant might be some species in the genus Vanilla other than V. planifolia.) What is unusual is that the tendrils of the vanilla vine double as aerial roots. That is, as rain water runs down the trunk of a tree, the aerial roots can absorb water and minerals. Some vanilla growers take advantage of this quirk of vanilla by wrapping a plastic bag stuffed with humus around the vine (last picture below); the aerial roots will dig into this humus and draw nourishment from it, thus allowing the plant to grow more or plumper fruit. (This paragraph and all of the pictures below except the first are drawn from Cameron [pp. 31 and plates 35, 33, 115, 36].
On farms the vanilla plant is usually propagated not from seed or by grafting but by using a cutting. A section of a vine is placed horizontally on the ground close to a support, covered with dead leaves, and nature does the rest. (For a more formal method, see Medina et al. [pp. 8-9].) The vanilla plant is unusual in that it is a hemiepiphyte [Cameron, pp. 30-32]. On the one hand, when it starts out, it roots in the ground and draws water and minerals from the ground just like a standard plant. On the other hand, once the plant is established, it often loses its connections to its roots; for example, a falling tree might sever the lengthy vine. If this happens, the vanilla vine becomes an epiphyte, which is a plant that grows on another but is not a parasite; it gets the water and minerals it needs from its aerial roots. Typically, a new vine will start producing in its fourth year, reach its peak in its sixth or seventh year, and thereafter its production will decrease each year until it dies after the tenth year [Medina et al., p. 29].
Processing of Vanilla
Once the bean has been picked, processing has two main phases. The first phase is that the grower must cure the beans. The second phase is to obtain the vanilla extract from the cured beans.
First, the curing of the beans by the grower follows something like the following steps, which must be done just right if the beans are to be flavorful. Curing has two general purposes: to remove moisture and to bring about the chemical reactions that give vanilla beans their flavor and aroma [Medina et al., p. 34]. Recall that the freshly picked beans do not have a vanilla taste or aroma. (General references are Cameron [pp. 159-63] and Medina et al. [pp. 31-32, 34-39].)
- Killing: Kill the the fruit to stop its growth; this disrupts the cells, which initiates chemical changes that are responsible for the aroma. The specific chemical reactions that occur depend on the methods of killing, where the typical methods are with hot water, scratching, or freezing. The Aztecs killed by exposing beans to sunlight until they turned brown.
- Sweating: The beans are kept densely stacked and insulated by wood or cloth and are exposed to heat. This is continued for seven to ten days until the beans turn brown. At this point, they have the characteristic taste and aroma of vanilla but have a high moisture content of 60-70 percent by weight. The beans would rot if left with this much water.
- Drying: The moisture content of the beans must be reduced to 25-30 percent to lock in the aroma and prevent rotting. A popular method of accomplishing this is by exposing the beans to air and alternating sun and shade.
- Conditioning: Store the beans in closed boxes for five or six months so that the final flavor and aroma can develop.
- Grading: Sort the beans by quality.
If these cured beans, which are brown, shriveled, oily, and flexible, are stored in an airtight container in the dark, they will keep for decades with no degradation of quality. This curing process is labor-intensive and is the third reason why vanilla beans are so expensive. Pictures of cured beans are below.
Second, to obtain vanilla extract, soak the beans in alcohol [Ecott, p. 12]; this process, which is surprisingly simple, is outlined below.
Vanilla can be used in two ways by a cook. The first does not involve any special processing; just put the beans, whole, cut up, or ground, into the dish as it is being prepared. The second is to use vanilla extract.
Natural Vanilla Extract Versus Artificial Vanilla Extract
Cooks usually use vanilla in the form of extract (or essence), and we now turn to a big question in the world of vanilla is: How does natural (or pure) vanilla extract compare to artificial (or imitation) vanilla extract?
Natural vanilla extract is derived by soaking cured vanilla beans in ethyl alcohol (which is a synonym for ethanol, which is just drinking alcohol) to extract the flavor from the beans. The content of vanilla extract is strictly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration in 21CFR169.175, which requires that vanilla extract be not less than 35 percent ethyl alcohol. Moreover, in a one gallon mixture of 35 percent ethyl alcohol and 65 percent water, 21CFR169.3 requires that at least 13.35 ounces of vanilla beans be used. The potency can be increased in premium vanilla extract by using more vanilla beans, by using higher quality beans, or by using a higher percentage of alcohol, which extracts more of the flavor from the beans. The specific formula that a manufacturer of vanilla extract uses is a closely guarded trade secret [Ecott, p. 11]. Since vanilla extract will last indefinitely, it joins honey and salt on my list of foodstuffs that will last forever without going bad.
Vanilla extract that meets the minimum government standards exactly is called single-fold extract. Ice cream makers typically use three-or four-fold extract, which uses three or four times as many beans [Ecott, pp. 210-11].
The flavor of vanilla comes from a symphony of more than 400 compounds [Ecott, p. 17] that are mixed together in the bean, of which 171 have been identified as aromatic [Medina et al.,p. 39-41]. The relative abundance of these compounds is variable and depends on growth conditions, soil composition, fruit maturity at picking, and, mainly, the type of processing [Medina et al., p. 2]. The main compound, however, is vanillin, which is largely responsible for the characteristic taste and smell of vanilla; a properly cured vanilla bean will be a little over six percent vanillin [Cameron, p. 162]. The structure of vanillin, which in 1858 was isolated in the lab, is shown below. (Vanillin can be synthesized from lignin, which can be found in wood. Most artificial vanillin is a by-product of papermaking.) Therefore, one can distinguish between the more expensive natural vanilla extract, which is the complicated mixture of chemicals from the bean, and the cheaper artificial extract, which is virtually pure vanillin. Keep in mind that the vanillin in natural vanilla extract is exactly the same as the vanillin in artificial vanilla extract, so the difference is not the vanillin. Rather, the difference is that the vanilla flavor of the natural extract comes from the interaction of more than 400 ingredients (vanillin plus a lot of others), whereas the vanilla flavor of artificial extract comes from only the single ingredient vanillin
There is a huge cost difference for these two extracts. Artificial vanilla extract can go for 18 cents per ounce versus natural for $2.50 and up per ounce. This enormous price difference accounts for the difference in use. Annual usage of artificial versus natural is about 16,000 metric tons versus 40 metric tons. For example, above we saw that vanillin is an ingredient in a Hershey bar. In short, the market has clearly spoken and uses much more artificial than natural extract.
What is one giving up if one uses artificial vanilla extract instead of natural? Cook's Illustrated set out to answer this question. A taste test was conducted, and the cooks were irked to find that no taste difference could be detected. Not content to let the honor of the natural be sullied, they tried another taste test, and the result was confirmed. Like econometricians, sophisticated cooks with a predetermined, desired result are not to be thwarted, so in 2009 they conducted a third taste test. Their main finding was:
As it turns out, flavor and aroma compounds in vanilla begin to bake off at around 280 to 300 degrees. Cakes rarely exceed an internal temperature above 210 degrees; cookies become much hotter as they bake. As a result, pure vanilla kept a slight flavor advantage in the cake—but not in the cookies.
So those 400 compounds do impart a pleasing complexity to the flavor, but many of these are volatile compounds that are lost if heated. In sum, to be a flavor-maximizing cook who is not wasteful, you should have both natural and artificial vanilla extract in your cupboard. Use natural vanilla with dishes that do not require heating such as cold desserts. Use artificial vanilla in dishes that are subject to high heat such as cookies. It is your choice for dishes cooked at an intermediate heat. (Everything since the picture of the structure of vanillin is drawn from a Cook's Illustrated web page. The testing is also briefly summarized on Wikipedia.)
One theory is that artificial vanilla extract does so well in these tests because it has more vanillin, which is the key factor giving vanilla its taste and which people have gotten used to. (I think the citation in the previous sentence is to the 2003 Cook's Illustrated taste tests but can't tell for sure due to the sloppiness that characterizes the Internet.)
To check the ingredients of vanilla extract, I went to Whole Foods and found that the label on the house brand, 365 Everyday Value, listed three ingredients.
- Water.
- Organic alcohol.
- Organic vanilla extractives.
So this vanilla extract contains only the ingredients required by law. It sells for $6.49 for two fluid ounces. I looked at another brand, Frontier, which had the same ingredient list except that the word "organic"did not appear; this went for $10.99 for four fluid ounces. The conclusion is that the terms "pure" and "natural" can be applied to these two vanilla extracts. Note that a list of ingredients does not say how much alcohol or how many beans are used (or what grade the beans are), so we have no way to judge the relative strength of these two extracts. Also note that this means that one who writes recipes must make some kind of an assumption about the quality of the vanilla extract that is being used, and these assumptions are never communicated to the user of the recipes. (Some vanilla extracts do give the percentage of alcohol; for example, the McCormick's vanilla extract pictured below specifies that it has 41 percent alcohol, which exceeds the required FDA minimum of 35 percent.)
The Entomology of Vanilla
Why does vanilla contain those 400 substances that make it taste good? We have encountered the answer in the discussions of perfumes (27 Mar 2015) and chocolate (16 May 2015). In short, most spices come from the substances that tropical plants have evolved as protection from the many herbivores, mainly insects. This leads to the question of why insects are so fierce in the tropics. One theory is that in temperate climates, winter serves to knock down the insects each year, while in the tropics the endless summer allows the insects to rage without respite.
Reading the List of Ingredients: Ice Cream as a Test Case
To see some of the pitfalls of trying to understand the list of ingredients on a product, in 2010 Cook's Illustrated looked at vanilla ice cream and found a variety of different ways of saying that the product contained vanilla. Here is the decoding of the terms.
- Vanilla extract: This is what is above called pure vanilla extract. This is the real deal.
- Natural vanilla flavor: This is vanillin synthesized from wood. This is considered natural since wood is natural.
- Vanilla: A mix of vanillin synthesized from wood and vanillin synthesized from resins. This can't be called natural since resins are not natural.
- Natural flavors: Contains just a trace of vanillin (there is no minimum level) and whatever other possibly oddball natural flavors the manufacturer chooses.
Some of the vanilla ice creams have little flecks, which are ground up vanilla beans, and you might think that these products taste better. Not so. Cook's Illustrated interviewed the president of a flavor manufacturing company who, "...said that the use of ground beans is all for show: It does little to boost vanilla taste, since such beans are leftovers from the extraction process and have already had their vanillin removed."
Even these four phrases do not exhaust the possibilities. For example, pictured below is a bottle of artificial vanilla extract that I found at Stop&Shop. The phrase used to describe it is "imitation vanilla flavor" since, strictly speaking, it does not satisfy the FDA regulation and, therefore, cannot call itself vanilla extract. The close up of the list of ingredients reads like the inventory of a chemical factory.
The Cook's Illustrated article also reveals why, when you look at the list of ingredients on a carton of ice cream, you see bizarre items such as guar gum, carob gum, tara gum, and carrageenan. The point of these additives is to deal with the following problem: As ice cream makes its way from the factory to your freezer, it might partially melt and re-freeze; the melting causes the fat and liquid to separate, and the re-freezing then destroys the creaminess. These additives try to maintain the desired creaminess in the face of these insults. These stabilizers started appearing in ice cream in the 1950s when, with the spread of home refrigerators with freezers, the location of the eating of ice cream started switching from the ice cream parlor to the home.
What Does Vanilla Taste Like?
While one might think that the taste of a fruit would be its most important characteristic, only a small fraction of these e-mails is devoted to taste. There are two reasons for this. First, my tasting apparatus at best is of average sensitivity; elevated powers of judging taste have not been granted to me as they have, for example,to Mei-Mei. Second, even for those with talents in this area, taste is so subjective that one persons's judgements are often of little use to others. To exemplify this subjectivity, consider the following list of terms that various experts have used to describe the taste of vanilla. (The first four terms are from Cameron [p. 168] and the rest from Ecott [p. 17].)
...hay-scented, tobacco-like, raisin, brown sugar, sweet, floral, balsamic, woody, nutty, marshmallow, leathery, dusty, smoky, strawy, spicy, animalic, walnut, cheesy, fatty, creamy, phenolic, pruney, rummy, medicinal, weedy, cherry-like, anisic, bacon, cucumber, mushroomy, plastic, cardboard, and faecal.
The appeal of this flavoring can be summed up by what the vanilla fancier Joseph Burnett said in 1900, as quoted by Ecott [p. vii]:
What is it like--this plant, so beloved of nature that she has bestowed upon it a veritable magic wallet, in the shape of a little sheath, wherein reposes such wealth of usefulness and delight?
Miscellany
In the picture below of McCormick's Extra Rich Pure Vanilla Extract, you can see that the box prominently displays "100% Madagascar Bourbon." These words "Madagascar" and "Bourbon" are used to stress the quality of the product. "Madagascar" is used because Madagascar has the reputation of producing the world's highest quality vanilla. As for "Bourbon," an analogy can be drawn with Champagne. Purists consider the term "Champagne" to be applicable only if the grapes are grown in Champagne and a specific process is used to produce the sparking wine. In contrast, fast-buck artists are willing to apply "Champagne" to any sparkling wine that is made by the specified process without regard to the origin of the grapes. Similarly, purists consider the term "Bourbon" to be applicable only if the vanilla beans are grown in the former French possessions of Madagascar, Reunion, and Comoros and cured using a specific process. In this case, the fast-buck artists are willing to apply "Bourbon" to any vanilla beans cured by the specified process without regard to the origin of the beans. "Bourbon" is used since the island of Reunion, where the technique of hand-pollinating orchid flowers was discovered, was formerly named "Bourbon" in honor of the French dynasty. (This paragraph is based from Ecott [pp. 135, 199, 98].)
Vanilla, whose aroma a parfumier describes as "cozy, comforting, and with a pleasing cookie-baking feeling to it," is a highly popular ingredient in perfumes, including Chanel No.5 and a bunch of other perfumes I never heard of [Ecott, p. 213]. A good perfume has a profile of scents called top notes, secondary notes, and base notes, which follow each other in time. It is because vanilla reliably delivers a base note that it appears in nearly all perfumes, unlike, say orange blossom (e-mail of 27 Mar 2015), which appears in only some perfumes [Cameron, p. 9]. The picture below shows a 1.7 ounce bottle of vanilla perfume selling for $58. Since you are spending more than $50, you get free shipping. Go to Amazon and search for "Vanilla perfume", and you will be blown away by the sea of choices. The Aztecs used vanilla not only to flavor chocolate drinks [Ecott, p. 7] but also to perfume cigars [Ecott, p. 22].
Aromatherapists delight in the smell of vanilla and have applied it in many ways. For example, Ecott [p. 215] states, "...some hospitals add it to their air-conditioning systems in the belief it will promote a more tranquil atmosphere." The scent of vanilla is also used to calm patients before an MRI or a CAT scan.
Unlikely as it might seem, those ugly, dried vanilla beans can, because of their flexibility, be woven into art objects. A popular use in Mexico is to make an ornament that hangs in the home and perfumes the air [Cameron, p. 125]. The pictures are from Cameron [pll. 131, 132, 133, 134] and Ecott [pll. 2, 3].
If you find that you are now dedicated to do-it-yourself cosmetics (27 Mar and 4 April 2015), here are instructions for making at home the top ten homemade vanilla-scented beauty products. It's the usual collection of scrubs, lip balms, bath bombs, body butters, and so forth.
For more than 40 recipes for cocktails made from vanilla, go to this site. Also, you might want to investigate vanilla liqueurs used as aperitifs to be served before dinner and digestifs to be served after dinner [Cameron, p. 128]. Google "vanilla liqueur images" and you will be staggered by the famous names--Kahlua, Grand Marnier Navan, Bailey's, even Haagen-Dazs and Dr. McGillicuddy's. Finally, don't forget to try the original Galliano L'autentico and experience what is called its "hallmark vanilla flavour." If you want a stronger vanilla taste, try Galliano Vanilla.
It is widely believed that Coca-Cola contains vanilla. Apparently working on the theory that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, in 2002 the company introduced Vanilla Coke. While hard to find, you can still buy it on Amazon.
Arachnophobes take notice: Spiders don't like vanilla. Use whole beans to keep them at bay.
The vanilla plant grows easily in the home or greenhouse, and with its glossy green leaves it makes a very attractive houseplant. Cameron [pp. 141-49] gives full instructions for growing vanilla in your home. You should, however, curb your fantasies of growing your own vanilla beans. As Cameron [p. 142] says:
Even the most highly skilled, green-thumbed gardener should not plan to cultivate Vanilla vines for the purpose of producing a crop of vanilla beans. The plants may take a decade or more to reach flowering size under artificial conditions, they are shy to flower in greenhouses, hand-pollination of Vanilla flowers is a tricky business, and the six to nine months needed for fruits to mature on the vine is beyond most people's level of patience....[Moreover,] vanilla bean processing and curing is a skillful art best left to the experiencedVanilla farmer.
Consult this site to get up to speed on the controversy on whether vanilla extract is gluten-free. My interpretation is that pure vanilla extract is gluten-free, but, since companies use secret recipes for their vanilla extract, who knows what's in it? At any rate, so little vanilla extract is used in a dish that it probably doesn't matter. Since pure vanilla extract contains alcohol, alcoholics should avoid it and stick with artificial vanilla extract.
Credit for bringing vanilla ice cream to the United States goes to Thomas Jefferson [Ecott, pp. 111-12]. While serving as the U.S. ambassador to France in the 1780s, he became addicted to luxury living. Back in the States in 1791, he continued his Parisian lifestyle by ordering vanilla beans (he called them "batons") from Paris. Jefferson's recipe for vanilla ice cream survives [Cameron, p. 18 (typeset), pl. 17 (in Jefferson's handwriting)].
Vanilla seed pods are Generally Recognized as Kosher (GRAK) and need no special certification.
The Dark Side of Vanilla
Vanilla is a dying crop. The root reason is that it is so labor-intensive that even in third-world countries farmers shy away from it. For example, the production in Mexico is one-tenth [Ecott, p. 45] of what it was 150 years ago. In addition, the resulting high prices make vanilla attractive to brigands; if one hijacks a vanilla shipment, one can make three lifetimes worth of money. Some growers go so far as to tatoo individual beans to protect them from theft. Paradoxically, the high price results in this crop being very risky and, therefore, unattractive to farmers. Also, there are local factors; for example, drilling for oil and refining it have damaged ecosystems in Mexico where vanilla is traditionally grown [Medina et al., p. 14]. Finally, with the imitation vanilla being so cheap and so close in quality, the hassle of real vanilla is hardly worth it,
Think twice about buying bargain vanilla in Mexico. Medina et al. [p. 25] state:
Vanilla sold in tourist markets around Mexico is sometimes not actual vanilla extract, but is mixed with an extract of the tonka bean, which contains coumarin. Tonka bean extract smells and tastes like vanilla, but coumarin has been shown to cause liver damage in lab animals and is banned in the US by the Food and Drug Administration. [Last link added.]
Vanilla is principally grown in tropical regions that are prone to violent storms. As the oceans warm, such super storms will become increasingly frequent. This creates vulnerability for coastal producers such as Madagascar and Indonesia.
The unexpected consequences of such storms has been described by Medina et al. [pp. 11-12]:
An apparently local shock such as a cyclone can have repercussions that extend over many years and across multiple continents and economic classes....For example, poor farmers in many developing nations were lured into the vanilla market in the late 1990s and early 2000s due to shortages in Madagascar's production, shortages that were partially due to cyclones. National campaigns were launched and incentives were provided by international agencies to promote vanilla production as a way out of poverty, and for many farmers, it did offer gains. While many Malagasy farmers suffered during that period, farmers elsewhere saw their fortunes soar. Yet, later stability in Madagascar‟s production, due to a relatively cyclone-free few years, led to a sharp decline in demand for vanilla from those emerging regions. Thus, and perversely, good weather in Madagascar can be understood as the "natural disaster" for farmers in other poor countries attempting to establish themselves in the global vanilla market.
There is a lot of pressure on companies to show they are engaged in ethical buying practices, especially in countries like Madagascar. Unfortunately, in many cases phantom issues such as child labor, starvation and exploitation of vanilla farmers are invented and phantom solutions are created while real issues such as education, infrastructure, health care and a respect for traditional vanilla curing methods are all but ignored.
Travel Tip
Your travel tip is taken from Ecott [p. 272]: "For anyone interested in discovering just how versatile an ingredient vanilla can be, I suggest a visit to The Vanilla Pod in Marlow-on-Thames where restaurateur Michael Macdonald is truly a gifted chef."
Party Tip
For your party activity you can not only provide your guests with a fish but also teach them to fish. Have your guests carry out this recipe and make their own vanilla extract. Your guests will be delighted by its simplicity. Needed ingredients and equipment for each guest are:
- Three cured vanilla beans. These are widely available, e.g., at Amazon. When you hand your guests the wizened, brown, dried up beans, assure them that you are making vanilla extract and not casting a voodoo spell.
- One cup of vodka, which provides the ethyl alcohol. If you use 80 proof vodka, this will provide 40 percent ethyl alcohol, so you will be exceeding the minimum FDA requirement of 35 percent cited above. If you use 100 proof vodka, this is 50 percent ethyl alcohol, and you will be exceeding the federal requirement even more and producing a premium vanilla extract. Vodka is recommended since it is usually flavorless and will not compete with the flavor of the vanilla. You may, however, allow each guest to use any liquor that appeals. It is said that that vanilla extract based on rum is especially good with ice cream or custard, and vanilla extract based on brandy produces outstanding vanilla icing for cakes [Cameron, p. 169].
- A glass jar with a tight fitting lid. Any glass jar will do, but you can give your party an down-home look by providing Mason jars.
- Slice through each bean lengthwise to cut it in half, but leave the two halves connected for about an inch at the end. See picture below. The purpose of the slicing is to expose more of the surface of the bean to the alcohol.
- Put the split beans into the jar and cover with vodka.
- Take the jar home. Put it in a cool, dry place for about two months to let the mixture steep. Shake it every once in a while
This mixture will provide vanilla extract for years. From time to time more vodka can be added to refresh the mixture. Your guests not only will have all the natural vanilla extract (not just vanillin) they will need for the foreseeable future, but they will know how to make more. In addition, they know that their vanilla extract only contains pure ingredients and has not been adulterated by the high fructose corn syrup sometimes added to commercial vanilla extract [Cameron p. 167]. Every time a guest uses this vanilla extract, he or she will have fond memories of your party, whose beneficial effects will have ramified down through the years and contributed to so many successful pies, cakes, cookies, and other creations.
Gift Idea
Here's a gift idea for the gourmet who has everything [Cameron, p. 169]. Using the technique described in the previous section, make several vanilla extracts using different liquors and beans from different countries. Put them in decorative bottles, and you can be quite sure that no one else will duplicate your gift.
Rick
References
Cameron, Ken, Vanilla Orchids: Natural History and Cultivation, Timber Press, 2011. The author is a biologist who has studied the genus Vanilla. I found this book reliable though sketchy on many topics that interested me and detailed on topics of no relevance to me. Much of this book can be found at this site. I had access to the entire book in hardcopy.
Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate, Thames and Hudson, third edition, 2013 (first edition published in 1997). See the description of this book in the e-mail of 16 May 2015.
Ecott, Tim, Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004. This is a very entertaining book that is in part a study of vanilla and in part a travelogue. Some parts of the book are marred by the author's ignorance of the basics of botany, so this book must be combined with Cameron. Selected pages throughout this book can be found at this site. Reference to these pages are indicated in this e-mail with a link; these links might not prove useful since, strange to relate, the pages available seem to change with successive accesses. It is annoying that this book has no index. I had access to the entire book in hardcopy.
Medina, Javier De La Cruz, et al., Vanilla: Post-harvest Operations, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, 16 June 2009. The document is available at http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/inpho/docs/Post_Harvest_Compendium_-_Vanilla.pdf. This work is uneven and goes into much detail that is of no interest to me, but it does have good illustrations and some material not conveniently available elsewhere.
