![]() Mexico remained the main source of the world's vanilla until the 1840s, when Edmund Albius, a 12-year-old enslaved boy on the Reunion, a French colony, discovered that you could hand-pollinate the vanilla orchid. And that’s what native populations were using it for: medicine. One of the earliest records of the word comes from The Indian Nectar, or a Discourse Concerning Chocolate, a 1662 text by English scholar Henry Stubbe that expounded on the health benefits of chocolate and vanilla based on how Spanish colonists encountered it. Otherwise, it won’t even bother to sprout a bean. ![]() In fact, it takes around three years for a vanilla orchid to start producing beans, and in order for that flower to produce a fruit, a bee or a hummingbird has to pollinate it first. Vanilla, as a plant, is extremely hard and fussy to grow, only flourishing in near-equator climates. ![]() Native to Mexico, vanilla, as chocolate was, was originally cultivated by Indigneous peoples. You probably won’t be surprised to find that vanilla most likely has come to mean boring because of colonialism.įirst, the history: Vanilla is actually as South American as chiles or chocolate. Vanilla, as an ingredient, is luxurious, imported, and multi-layered in flavor - it makes almost everything better and yet the word has come to mean boring. Yet, calling something “vanilla” in 2020 is a pointed insult. One of the most complex spices, its delicate, sweet-yet-spicy flavor lends itself to woody, berry-like, floral, and rummy notes.
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