Vanilla

       A climbing orchid, native to the hot moist forests of tropical America, is the chief source of vanilla. This favorite flavoring is obtained from the fully grown but unripe cured fruits. The plant is a vine with large leathery leaves and greenish-yellow flowers. The fruits are long, thin, yellow, pod-like capsules, six to ten inches long. They are known as vanilla beans.

       Vanilla is a strictly tropical plant and requires a hot climate with much rain. In cultivation it is grown from cuttings, just like sugar cane, and is trained to climb over supports such as posts or living trees.

       The flavor and aroma are not present in the vanilla beans until they have been cured. The beans are picked at just the right time before they are ripe and put through a sweating process. They are exposed to the sun during the morning and protected by blankets during the afternoon. At night they are placed in air-tight boxes. After this curing process has been completed, the pods become tough and fragrant and turn dark brown.

       Although vanilla was originally a Mexican plant, ninety per cent of the world's crop of vanilla comes from Madagascar. Almost fifty per cent of the total crop of vanilla is used in the United States.

       Vanilla flavoring was used by the Indians long before Columbus discovered the New World. The vanilla plant was found in Mexico by the Spaniards who were in search of gold. They saw that the Mexican natives were not digging for gold in the steaming-hot tropical jungles but, to the astonishment of the Spaniards, were tending vines that bore fragrant flowers. The Spaniards also saw the dark-skinned men and women picking long beans from the vines and fermenting the beans to develop the strange but delicious vanilla flavoring. The Aztecs used vanilla to flavor chocolate.

       It is said that Montezuma, Emperor of the Aztecs, drank no other beverage than chocolate which was flavored with vanilla and other spices. It was beaten to a froth just before it was drunk. Montezuma liked it so well that he drank fifty pitchers of it every day. He drank from a golden cup and stirred his drink with a spoon made of gold or tortoise shell. And his household drank two thousand pitchers of chocolate every day!

       The Spaniards saw, also, hundreds of bees and hummingbirds flashing among the leaves and flowers of the vanilla vines. But none of the Spaniards knew that the bees and hummingbirds not only were getting food for themselves but also were pollinating the vanilla flowers. In the tropical jungles, where the vanilla vines grow wild, the bees and the hummingbirds still pollinate the vanilla flowers, but now on the vanilla plantations the fragrant blossoms are pollinated by people who transfer the pollen from flower to flower with pointed sticks.

       Vanilla has a delicious flavor that will not let its popularity die out. Vanilla is used to flavor chocolate, ice cream, candy, pudding, cake, and beverages. It is also used to flavor tobacco and perfumes. Occasionally the vanilla bean itself is used for flavoring, but an extract of vanilla that is made by treating the crushed beans with alcohol is used more often.

       A cheap substitute for vanilla is obtained from the tonka beans of Trinidad and South America. Several other plants have been used unsuccessfully for the true vanilla flavoring. The artificial flavoring known as vanillin is made from pine wood and oil of cloves. Although artificial vanilla is much cheaper than real vanilla and can be put on the market with less cost, the cultivation of the vanilla plant is by no means a thing of the past. You can truly say that your vanilla ice cream, your chocolate candy bar, and your birthday cake are orchid flavored. Svoboda