HERB - Question about the origins about vanilla

[Gaylin Walli]

Lady Katerine wrote:

>The other day I was talking to a couple of co-workers about 
>chocolate and the way it's prepared in different cultures, and the 
>question of vanilla's origins came up. "Everyone" knows chocolate is 
>very late SCA period, and wasn't prepared the way we know it today, 
>but what about vanilla?

Vanilla, or Vanilla planifolia or Vanilla fragrans (depending on 
where you look), is also a New World plant. Popular literature has 
the first taste of vanilla in a European's mouth have been recorded 
on Sept 14, 1502 (I suspect the diary of Christopher Columbus would 
be a good place to look here as he is the gentleman in question).

Part of the reason that you don't hear as much about vanilla as you 
do about chocolate is most likely that vanilla's role through history 
has been to *improve* the taste of chocolate. The Aztecs used it, 
calling it tlilxochitl, and the Indians of Central American also 
harvested and used it mixed with cocoa. That's about where the 
Spanish took over and started the whole drink phenomenon.

Most research that I've found on vanilla waits until a mosquito's 
breath past 1600 to account for the sole use of vanilla as a sole 
flavoring agent without chocolate. The basics of the plants 
cultivation is essentially the same, however. The plant is is really 
a vine growing on a tree or some other bush on which the vanilla vine 
can grow.

It takes about three years for a vanilla plant to flower and this is 
where it becomes really interesting. Since it was first discovered, 
the ability of the plant to pollinate was lost. Today, and even in 
its original homeland, vanilla can't pollinate by itself; most 
pollination of vanilla flowers is done by human hands. Pollination 
happens in the morning just after the flower has bloomed and those 
flowers only last for one day. Roughly 5-9 months after the flower 
dies, a green pod is ready to harvest. Freshly harvested vanilla 
beans look an awful lot like French green beans, actually.

Interestingly, fresh picked vanilla pods do not have that typical 
"vanilla" flavor or odor. The "aroma" we associate with vanilla 
("vanillan" or 4-hydroxy-3methoxy-benzaldehyde) doesn't develop until 
the pod begins its processing. But here's where my knowledge is a 
little lacking. I think, and I'm not sure, that in period (or near 
period) the beans at this point were sun-cured, wrapped in cloth 
(wool?) at night to retain heat, and unwrapped in the morning in a 
cyclical process that lasted about 6 months. Anyone with more 
specific research info on this would have my heartfelt thanks.

Iasmin

Iasmin de Cordoba, iasmin at home.com
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