There are more than a hundred different species of vanilla orchid, and they grow all over the tropics with the exception of Australia. All of the vanilla orchids produce fruits containing seeds, but only a few species bear the large aromatic pods which can be used commercially. Virtually all of the cultivated vanilla in the world today comes from just one species, Vanilla planifolia (sometimes called Vanilla fragrans), a plant indigenous to Central America, and particularly the south-eastern part of Mexico. At least two other varieties, Vanilla pompona, and Vanilla tahitensis also provide a serviceable culinary pod, although they are not as readily obtainable and they produce a different flavour and aroma to the planifolia.
For hundreds of years the secret of the Mexican vanilla species caused confusion and dissent among botanists in Europe. They simply couldn’t identify the precise plant from which the beans were collected.
The first known written reference to the vanilla orchid dates from 1552, where it is described in the ‘Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum herbis …’ a tome which lay hidden in the Vatican library until the early 20th Century. The authors called the plant tlilxochitl, from the Nahuatl language spoken by the Aztecs and still used in Mexico today. Known as the Badianus Code, this herbal was compiled by an Indian convert to Christianity named Martinus de la Cruz and a Spanish scholar, Juan Badianus. They list tlilxochitl as an ingredient in a nosegay, a potion to protect against infection and worn around the neck when travelling. The potion includes both the ‘black flower’ and the ‘rope flower’ (mecaxochitl), which was also sometimes used in flavouring chocolate. A small drawing of tlilxochitl in the Badianus manuscript gives a crude impression of the flat leaves and delicate flowers of the vanilla orchid.
The emissaries of the Spanish Empire were ambiguous in their attitude to the Indian cultures in the Americas. While wishing to stamp out native religions and replace them with Catholicism, they were open to learning what they could from them about indigenous medicines and herbs. This was a time when medicines and herbs were indistinguishable, and the natural world was seen as the repository of a seemingly limitless supply of pharmaceutical possibilities.
At the end of her life, Queen Elizabeth I developed a taste for puddings containing vanilla. Like potatoes and tobacco, the flavour was something from the New World, and Elizabeth is thought to have been introduced to the exotic taste by her apothecary, Hugh Morgan, in around 1602. The English Queen discovered the pleasure of the dark pods relatively late, since they had been brought to Europe by the Spanish as early as 1513, after they made their first forays into north and Central America from their settlements in Cuba. Vanilla joined new commodities like indigo, cochineal, cacao and tobacco as they made their appearance in the Old World.
In 1605, the royal apothecary sent some vanilla pods to the French botanist Charles de l’Ecluse, who described them in his Atrebatis Exoticorum published at Leiden. L’Écluse called them ‘Lobus oblongus aromaticus’, remarking that ‘anyone who sniffs them will soon have a headache’. It is impossible to tell if the pods were actually from Vanilla planifolia, but it seems likely that if they came from Morgan then they must have been received via a Spanish source, perhaps captured from a Spanish ship en-route from the New World. It is likely therefore that they came originally from Mexico, since those were the pods which for some time had been used by the Spanish as an additive in hot chocolate, and to perfume cigars—another habit learned from the Mexicans.
L’Ecluse was also in possession of at least part of the knowledge gathered in Mexico by Francisco Hernandez, physician to the Spanish King Philip II. Hernandez travelled in Mexico from 1570–1577, rejoicing in the grandiloquent title ‘Proto-Medico to the Indies’. Philip II sent him there to compile a list of the newly discovered plants and medicines which might prove commercially valuable to the Crown. According to Hernandez; “a decoction of vanilla beans steeped in water causes the urine to flow admirably; when mixed with mecaxuchitl, vanilla beans cause abortion; they warm and strengthen the stomach; diminish flatulence; cook the humours and attenuate them; give strength and vigour to the mind; heal female troubles; and are said to be good against cold poisons and the bites of venomous animals.”
Hernandez called the vanilla pods by their Nahuatl name, tlilxochitl, but his work was not published in Spain for many years after his return, in part because Philip II was unhappy with the amount of purely scientific, rather than commercially valuable information contained within it. Fragments of Hernandez’s work ‘Rerum Medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus’ eventually appeared in 1628 but it is quite probable that he had made use of some of the material contained in the Badianus Code which already existed when he first reached Mexico. Like the Aztecs, Hernandez never saw a wild vanilla orchid and was content to continue describing the plant as flore nigro aromatico— the perfumed black flower. In Spain the rich dark fruits were called ‘little pods’ or ‘vainilla’, a diminutive of ‘vaina’ which in turn derives from the Latin, vagina, meaning simply ‘sheath’. Vanilla and orchid share an irredeemably erotic etymology, given that ‘orchid’ derives from ‘orchis’, the Greek word for testicle. In the sixteenth century Hieronymous Tragus claimed that orchids did not have seeds, and he postulated a theory that orchids sprang from animal’s seminal secretions that fell onto the ground. Believing that like created like, his evidence was the similarity in appearance of some orchids to certain animals, a development of an ancient theory that bees, for example, sprang from the carcasses of bulls. Orchids that looked like bees must therefore have come from bull semen.
The word ‘vanilla’, spelled as it is now, was not used until 1658 when Willem Piso published De Indiae utriusque Re Naturali et Medica in Amsterdam. Piso was something of a prodigy, and had attended Leiden University at the age of twelve, eventually serving as a doctor in the service of the Governor of Brazil where he travelled widely. Piso’s Brazilian materia medica is one of the earliest and most important texts on tropical medicine, and he is credited with introducing the Ipecac (Cephaelis ipecacuanha) plant to Europe as an emetic and potential cure for dysentery. Within a few years of Piso, Francesco Redi, a talented Italian scientist and physician to the Medici court, published ‘Experimenta’, a work on ‘diverse natural matters, in particular those carried to us from the Indies’. Redi’s work contains a detailed illustration of a vanilla pod, and what is certainly the first microscopic view of a vanilla seed.
By the late seventeenth century the use of chocolate was well established in Europe, and vanilla as a flavouring was reasonably well known, although the Spanish Empire still jealously guarded its source of supply. Along with coffee, tea and cacao it was specifically named in a Royal Edict issued at Versailles in 1692, the first French law relating to the sale of those commodities. Trading in vanilla was restricted to those merchants who had paid the Crown a monopoly fee. Anyone found selling vanilla without the Royal warrant would have the beans confiscated and need to pay a fine of a thousand livres. Unless it had been grown on French territory, and been carried aboard a French vessel, vanilla could only be brought into France via the ports at Marseilles or Rouen, where customs officials could verify the cargoes. Anyone found adulterating the product also faced corporal punishment.
William Dampier, the English buccaneer and adventurer, gives the first truly interesting description of the value placed on vanilla pods in his ‘New Voyage round the World’ first published in 1697. Recording a visit to what he calls Guatulco and the Capolita River (modern day Huatulco and Copalita in Mexico) he describes seeing the vanilla pods—which he calls ‘cods’—drying in the sun:
“The Vinello is a little Cod full of small black seeds; it is four or five inches long, about the bigness of the stem of a tobacco leaf, and when dried much resembling it, so that our Privateers at first have often thrown them away when they took any, wondering why the Spaniards should lay up tobacco stems. This Cod grows on a small Vine, which climbs and supports itself by the neighbouring trees; it first bears a yellow flower, from whence the Cod afterwards proceeds. It is first green, but when ripe it turns yellow; the Indians (whose manufacture it is, and who sell it cheap to the Spaniards) gather it and lay it in the Sun, which makes it soft, then it changes to a Chestnut colour. Then they frequently press it between their fingers, which makes it fat. If the Indians do anything to them beside, I know not; but I have seen the Spaniards sleek them with Oil.”
Dampier clearly states that he saw the vinellos both on the Gulf Coast of Mexico at Campechy, and also on the Pacific coast at Huatulco. For much of the nineteenth century it was assumed that the vanilla was indigenous to the north-eastern edge of central Mexico simply because this is where the Totonac people made the most successful commerce in vanilla. Climatic conditions here are ideal, with moist mountain slopes fanned by ocean breezes. The region also has good transport routes to the capital and to the major port at Veracruz, from where the beans were shipped to Europe. However, Dampier also clearly identifies vanilla growing in the southern Mexican states, now known to be part of its true biological range which also extends into Guatemala, Honduras, Guyana and Brazil. The English adventurer also describes trying to collect and cure vinellos, and failing:
“The Indians have some secret that I know not. I have often askt the Spaniards how they were cured, but I never could meet with any could tell me. One Mr. Cree also, a very curious Person, who spoke Spanish well, and had been a Privateer all his Life, and seven years a Prisoner among the Spaniards at Portobel and Cartagena, yet upon all his enquiry could not find any of them that understood it. Could we have learnt the Art of it, several of us would have gone to Bocca-toro Yearly, at the dry season and cured them, and freighted our Vessel. We there might have had Turtle enough for food, and store of Vinello’s. Mr. Cree first shewed me those at Boccatoro. At or near a town also called Caihooca, in the Bay of Campeachy, these Cods are found. They are commonly sold for Three pence a Cod among the Spanish in the West Indies, and are sold by the druggist, for they are much used among chocolate to perfume it. Some will use them among Tobacco for it gives a delicate scent. I never heard of any Vinello’s but here in this Country, about Caihooca and at Bocca-toro.’
With luck, Dampier might have found his vinellos elsewhere in Central America since the aromatic species occur from eastern Mexico southwards to Costa Rica. Nonetheless, Vanilla planifolia (the so-called flat-leafed variety and the one which has become the predominant species in agriculture) is not a common plant in the wild. In pre-Hispanic times, the Totonac people of Veracruz regarded their vanilla orchids as a blessing of Nature, something that they would find occasionally in the forest, and use in trade and exchange. Knowing where to find a mature vine, heavy with fruit, was a valuable secret. Even today, it is almost impossible to find genuinely wild Vanilla planifolia specimens in the forest, and Mexican botanists have classified the plant as critically endangered. In Veracruz State, it grows so readily that it seems certain that all of the plants found near human populations are cuttings transplanted from cultivated specimens. When the Spaniards and other visitors from the Old World first reached the Americas they were reliant on the indigenous peoples’ knowledge of the local flora and fauna. It is not easy to tell one vanilla species from another by appearance alone, and perhaps a third of the vanilla family produce fruit which is more or less aromatic. Even so, the specific chemical qualities so sought after in the cured pods of Vanilla planifolia are not found in any of the other vanilla orchids. It is a plant which has guarded its secrets well, and still retains much of its mystery.
Under the right conditions, an established vanilla vine is capable of long life in the wild, perhaps a thousand years. In Seychelles I have seen vanilla vines in the forest, seemingly at home on the humid green slopes of Mahé’s steep hills. To the casual eye they seem perfectly natural in the luxuriant jungle. In fact, like every other specimen of commercial vanilla outside Central America they are an exotic invader, escapees from man-made plantations. These long green alien vines rarely flower, and never produce seed pods, since like most orchids they have a highly specific system of pollination. The vine itself is relatively easily to grow if the temperature and soil conditions are right, but the flowers can only be reliably fertilised in nature by a particular tropical bee, found only in Central America.
Given that each vanilla pod contains thousands of tiny black seeds, it seems reasonable to ask why these can’t simply be planted. Like many orchids the seeds need a specific symbiotic fungus to be present for healthy germination. This fungal association, which botanists call ‘mycorrhizal’, seems to be beneficial to both plant and fungus. The plant gives the fungus a home, while the fungus assists the plant by breaking down nutrients in the soil, converting them into simpler chemicals such as glucose and fructose which are nutrients to the orchid. Botanists speculate that one reason for the scarcity of Vanilla planifolia in the wild is that this mycorrhizal fungus may be highly specialised and restricted in its own range. None of this was known by the Aztecs, the Totonacs or of course the Spanish invaders. They relied on Indian knowledge, and the ability of the indigenous people to cultivate the orchids they found in the forest.
When Spanish ships began taking the riches of the New World to Europe the value of the scarce vanilla pods escalated, in part because drinking hot chocolate became fashionable. The recipes for the production of chocolate received from Mexico were highly variable, and the necessary sweetening ingredients not always available. According to Bernal Diaz, Cortés’s historian, the Aztecs consumed their xocoatl cold, whipping it into a froth so thick ‘it must be taken with the mouth wide open’. Understandably, the Spanish nobility were initially highly dubious about the beverage, with one conquistador claiming it ‘so odd a taste, it is more fit to be thrown to Hogs than presented to Men’.
However, with the addition of sugar and milk, the energy promoting drink became popular with the aristocracy and spread gradually from Spain to other European capitals. In France, the beverage was popularised in about 1615 by the daughter of Spain’s Philip III, Anne of Austria, who married Louis XIII. By 1657 London had its first chocolate house and the drink was soon being sold in the famous coffee houses where men met to discuss all manner of business. In his diary for 1664, Samuel Pepys mentions drinking ‘very good Jocolatte’ at a coffee house in the company of Peter Pett, the Navy Commissioner.
Spain’s foremost colonial successors, France and England, vied with each other to dominate the trade in valuable commodities brought to the markets of Europe. Tea, coffee and chocolate were sought-after luxuries, being described by John Chamberlain in 1685 as ‘those three Drugs, chiefly wherein Heaven has shewed itself liberal to Men’. Chamberlain’s work on ‘The Manner of Making of Coffee, Tea and Chocolate’ relied heavily on translations of French and Spanish publications, especially a work by Antonio Colmenero fifty years earlier. Colmenero warned that the new drink, chocolate, is believed by many of its advocates ‘to make them fat’. However, even those people who ‘take it in the Dog-dayes find themselves well on it.’
Although he is aware that cacao is the principle ingredient of drinking chocolate, Chamberlain states that the ‘Indian word chocolatl signifies a confection composed of very many ingredients which hold great commerce with the Mexicans.’ Chamberlain gives a recipe for chocolate using seven hundred cacao nuts, white sugar, Mexico Pepper, aniseed, cloves and water of oranges. He adds:
“Everybody uses this confection and puts therein Three little Straws or as the Spaniards call them Vanillas de Campeche. Our Vanillas are used in making the Chocolate, the which are very pleasant to the sight, they have the smell of Fennel, and perhaps not much different in quality, for all hold that they do not heat too much, and do not hinder the adding of Annis seed”
Recipes for chocolate gradually became simpler, and Spanish society often relinquished vanilla in favour of cinnamon, while the French and English maintained their preference for the ‘little straws.’ Writing his ‘Natural History of Chocolate’ in 1730, again largely a translation of a French work, John Brown lists vanilla as an essential component to the beverage, unlike so many others which had already fallen out of use. Of the original Mexican ingredients, he remarks, ‘only cinnamon and vanilla are spices of general approbation’:
“Vanilla is a Cod of brown colour and delicate smell; it is flatter and longer than our [French] beans, it contains a Luscious Substance, full of little black shining Grains. They must be chosen fresh, full and well grown, and care must be taken that they are not smeared with Balsam, nor put in a moist place.”
While acknowledging the value of the Luscious Substance as an ingredient in drinking chocolate, Brown introduces a note of caution:
“The agreeable smell, and exquisite Taste that they communicate to Chocolate, have prodigiously recommended it; but long experience having taught that it heats very much, its use is become less frequent, and those who prefer their Health more than pleasing their Senses, abstain from it entirely. In Spain and Italy, Chocolate prepared without ‘Vanilla’ is called at present ‘Chocolate of Health’; and in the French Islands of America, where ‘Vanilla’ is neither Scarce nor dear, as in Europe, they do not use it at all, though they consume as much chocolate there as in any other Place in the World. However a great many people are prejudiced in favour of Vanilla, and that I may pay a due Deference to their Judgements, I shall employ ‘Vanilla’ in the Composition of Chocolate in the best Method and Quantity as it appears to me, one two or three Cods, sometimes more to a pound, according to Everyone’s Fancy.”
The idea that vanilla might be a ‘heating’ element—something that would inflame the passions—was soon added to its repertoire of side affects. In the eighteenth century, Casanova is said to have enjoyed a recipe for mulled wine which included vanilla as one of its special ingredients. In his memoirs he also relates saving a locket of a lover’s hair and asking a Jewish confectioner to grind it to a fine powder and ‘mix it in a paste with various ingredients including ‘amber, sugar, angelica and vanilla’ which he kept in a sweetmeat box of fine crystal. Casanova’s contemporary, the Marquis de Sade allegedly supplied dinner guests with a rich dessert of chocolate flavoured with vanilla and Spanish fly which caused the men and women to be ‘seized with a burning sensation of lustful ardour’. De Sade also included vanilla chocolate pastilles in the list of foods he wished sent to him during one of his sojourns in gaol. Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, who in many ways defined the height of contemporary French taste, had chocolate served to her at dinner, ‘flavoured with vanilla and ambergris, accompanied by celery soup and a handful of truffles.’
In 1762, the sensual appeal of vanilla was given some kind of scientific basis when Bezaar Zimmermann, a German physician, published his treatise “On Experiences” in which he claimed that, “No fewer than 342 impotent men, by drinking vanilla decoctions, have changed into astonishing lovers of at least as many women.”
Like so many natural products vanilla acquired a curative reputation, seemingly effective against dyspepsia, melancholia, hypochondria and lymphatic disorders but according to one pharmacopoeia was not recommended for ‘young people of an ardent and irritable nature especially those whose temperament is prone to over excitement’.
Notwithstanding its aphrodisiac potential, England and France (Spain’s colonial rivals), were determined to grow vanilla in their own overseas territories. The aristocracy were acquiring a taste for it, and vanilla pods were worth their weight in silver. If only someone could solve the mystery of how to grow the vines successfully outside Mexico, and then induce them to bear fruit they would break the Spanish monopoly. They would also make themselves rich.