What don't I understand about Vanilla

[Wendy DeBord]

Good ending Rachel, mentioning the diet coke ..........you made me chuckle!!!!!!!!!! Honesty like that is so ------- good!

[curlywurlyfi]

big article in today's Independent about vanilla which brings another substance to the debate

The bitter taste of vanilla

A French-based bio-technology giant, Rhodia, has perfected a new version of vanillin, Rhovanil Natural, made by fermenting rice bran with a harmless bacteria.  [...]  Under European and American marketing rules, the fermented vanillin cannot be described as 'natural vanilla' but it can be called a 'natural flavouring'.

[Redsugar]

In 1835, Fr. Naturalist Charles Morren found a method to cultivate vanilla commercially in places other than Mexico (where the Spainard Fanciso Hernãndez discovered araco aromatico in 1571 and proclaimed that it was in high favour amongst grandees in New Spain.) The orchid-like bloom of Vanilla plenifolia was revealed to be double sexed and pollination of the flower dependent upon the bee melipona, native only to Mexican vanilla-growing districts.

Later, experiments were to show that vanilla flowers could be pollinated by hand, with an expert able to pollinate about 200 flowers per day. Although Mexico would continue to produce the world's finest vanilla, French islands such as Madagascar & Réunion eventually became more prolific producers. By 1955, annual world production of vanilla beans reached about 700 tons.

Traditionally, the finest vanilla has been ascertained to come from Mexico's Mazatlán Valley, where it was for many years cultivated by descendents of the Aztecs. However, the islands of Madagascar, Réunion, and Comoro supplied about 80 percent of U.S. imports. Additionally, some beans were exported from Jamaica, Tahiti, Java, and Brazil.

Acording to the entry in Larousse Gastronomique, "the pods are gathered before they are completly ripe, plunged into boiling water, then, before they are quite dry, shut in tins, where their aroma develops. The best quality pods, very smooth in flavour, are covered w/ a frost of vanilline crystals." The articles proceeds to appraise the finest sources: "The Mexican vanilla is the most highly esteemed; after it come thos of Guiana, Guadaloupe, and of Réunion."

Additionally, we are keenly apprised that "it is sometimes falsified, either by emptying the pods and filling them w/ a neutral paste or by brushing ordinary vanilla w/ Peruvian balsam to frost them artificially w/ benzoic acid crystals."

Anyway, back to Central America: When the Spanish conquistadores, led by Hernán Cortés, were in Mexico in 1520, one of their officers, Bernal Días, observed that the emperor Montezuma was drinking chocolatl, a beverage consisting of powdered cocoa beans and ground corn, flavoured w/ tlilxochitl (ground black vanilla pods!), and honey.

It wasn't until 1602, that Hugh Morgan, apothecary to Queen Eliz. I, recommended that vanilla be used as an exquisite flavour in its own right, following, obviously, the example of the Aztecs. By 1700, vanilla was used in France for flavouring chocolate & scenting tobacco.

In 1841, Edmond Albius, a former slave on Réunion, perfected a quick pollination method: With the pointed tip of a small bamboo stick, he picked up the adhesive pollen masses, and prying up the flaplike rostellum inside the flower, he pressed the male pollen mass into contact w/ the sticky female stigma. This same mentod of artifical pollination of vanilla is basically used commercially today.

Vanillin, the crustalline component, was first isolated from vanilla pods by Gobley in 1858. By 1874, it had been obtained from glycosides of pine tree sap, temporarily causing an economic depression in the natural vanilla industry. The year 1891 brought another difficult period for natural vanilla, when two other processes for producing artificial or synthetic vanillin were introduced. One used eugenol, an aromatic substance obtained by fractional distillation of clove oil; the other was a patented electrolytic method of producing vanillin from sucrose. Subsequently, other syntheses of vanillin were developed from lignin, waste paper pulp, oil of sassafras & coal tar.

The FDA standards require that the label reads "Imitation Vanilla" when the product contains any synthetic ingredients. If the label states "Vanilla Extract," the product must be derived from vanilla beans.

For the past 18 years, I have adhered to the advice of Nancy Silverton (whose first book I bought while enrolled at cooking school) re selecting vanilla beans: "I use large plump beans, which are about 1/2-inch wide and about 5 inches long. Beans should be slightly firm, packed with seeds, and not too moist. Adjust the number of vanilla beans in a recipe according to the size of your beans. Unfortunately, the skinny, shriveled-up beans found inmost supermarkets have so little flavour that they're a waste of money. A vanilla bean should have a pungent, almost overwhelming vanilla aroma. Store in the refrigerator...to keep fresh."