2024-08-23 11:52:02
Without the discovery of hand pollination by a slave child 180 years ago, this prized spice would never have thrived outside of Mexico.
The history of vanilla, as with most truly international crops, spans a global atlas.
But vanilla is not native to Madagascar, even though this country dominates its world trade. The use of the plant It began in the jungles of Mexico and Central Americawhere a long, winding vine evolved to develop that distinctive, penetrating aroma we all know so well.
What is perhaps most captivating about vanilla is the fact that this multi-billion dollar industry exists thanks to a 12-year-old slave boy who lived 180 years ago on a remote island in the Indian Ocean.
But the orchid, whose pod-shaped fruits contain the sweet essence of vanilla, arrived there from Mexico, where the indigenous Totonac people, who settled around 600 AD on Mexico’s Atlantic coast, first noticed the scent.
A LEGEND ABOUT VANILLA
The Totonacs have an ancient legend about the origin of the vanilla plant.
Legend has it that a royal princess eloped with a young man, but both were discovered and killed.
When they died, a tree and a climbing orchid appeared in their resting place: the orchid wrapped around the tree trunk, resembling a woman’s arms around her lover.
The flowers that sprouted from the vine grew into fragrant pods, known today as vanilla beans.
The Aztecs used vanilla to flavor xocoatl, the drink they made from cocoa and other spices, but even then it was reserved for nobility or special occasions.
It was this precious drink that Emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin offered to Hernán Cortés and his band of Spaniards when they arrived at his capital city, Tenochtitlán, in 1519.
During the first decades of the conquest, the Spanish brought dozens of fruits, vegetables, and other crops (including vanilla) across the Atlantic to display and grow in Spain. Historians call this movement of food and goods the Columbian Exchange.
“Vanilla and cocoa have always traveled together,” said orchid expert Adam Karrenmans, a professor at the University of Costa Rica and director of the Lankester Botanical Garden, a major orchid research center based in Costa Rica.
Europeans liked the creamy liquid and the drink spread, entering France from Spain in the early 17th century after the marriage between Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, daughter of the King of Spain.
Madagascar dominates the global vanilla trade, but the plant originated in the rainforests of Mexico and Central America.
After crossing the Atlantic, vanilla soon went its own way. In 1602, near the end of Elizabeth I of England’s reign, the monarch’s doctor began adding the spice to her dishes, believing it to be a powerful aphrodisiac, writes Rosa Abreu-Junkel in the book “Vanilla: A Global History.”
Across the English Channel, the powerful Madame de Pompadour added vanilla to her diet when she tried to win back her lover, King Louis XV of France, around 1750.
Vanilla had already entered the global spice trade that was redrawing borders and changing economies around the world, as European colonial powers scrambled to get their hands on the pods.
Everyone wanted the spice: chefs experimented with desserts, manufacturers produced new perfumes and aristocrats just wanted to show off, but global vanilla production was stuck in the same strip of coastal American land where it had thrived for centuries.
Other colonial powers began exploring the idea of growing vanilla outside the Spanish colonies, writes Tim Ecot in his book “Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Luscious Substance.”
The British in India, the French in the Indian Ocean colonies, the Dutch in Java, and even the Spanish in the Philippines all tried their hand at planting it in the 1600s and 1700s, but none were successful.
Vanilla pods on the plant before being driedIMAGE SOURCE,MICHAL MORAVCIK/ALAMY
Karremans seems almost amused by these attempts.
“Every time Europeans took the plants and planted them in their colonies in other parts of the world, they found that the plants could grow and flower there, but they never produced fruit,” says the expert, who studies the ecological interactions between orchids and their pollinators and seed dispersers.
Orchids have very specialized pollinators, Karremans explained, and vanilla requires a specific type of bee found only in tropical regions of the Americas.