November 22, 2017 • 34 mins
The history and science behind vanilla is anything but bland. Anney and Lauren explore how the fruit of a rare orchid captured the world's fancy, and what lengths researchers go to to replicate the flavor.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Anny Yes, and
I'm Lauren vogelbaumb and this is our not So Vanilla
Vanilla episode. That's right, we're tackling vanilla and we're going
to talk about why vanilla has got kind of a
bad connotation to its being born. Right, it's not at all. No, no, no, no,
and thank you too, listener Gina for suggesting. She also
(00:30):
sent in a book suggestion, Vanilla queen, we really need
to start up the food Stuff book Club. Oh yeah,
our our list of books is long and ever growing. Yeah,
because I don't read about food enough. No, let's definitely
start a book. Oh it would be delightful though. Okay, alright,
So vanilla, yes first, oh yes, Oh indeed. And most importantly,
(00:53):
it's the flavor of America's favorite ice cream. Yeah, which
I found a little surprising, but according to the Internet
ice Cream Association, so I guess they would know. Of
Americans favorite vanilla, followed by chocolate with an eight point
nine percent. I guess it's spread after after vanilla. Many
categories of ice cream flavor. My favorite, if I had
(01:16):
to choose a general one is chocolate, and my little
brothers was vanilla, and will you see it in some
pretty serious arguments about it, because I'd be trying to
convince him why he was wrong, like that, you're just frong.
Chocolate involves vanilla flavoring, and it's also got chocolate flavor
exactly right. It's science. It's it's scientifically proven that you're wrong, Bobby,
(01:37):
if you're listening. Um, So, vanilla it's a species of
the orchid family. The being itself comes from a seed
pot of the evergreen climbing orchids that sort of looked
like vines. Bonds that can reach up to one and
five ft are thirty two ms. Yeah, they kind of
getting stores. Specifically comes from one of three species, the
(02:01):
largest share being vanilla plant foila a k. Mexican or
Bourbon vanilla. But you can find vanilla to heat nous
a ka to heati vanilla, and sometimes vanilla pompona a
k a West Indian vanilla. About three fourths of vanilla
we by today comes from Madagascar and Reyjon, which is
an island off the coast of Madagascar. It used to
(02:23):
be named Bourbon, hence Bourbon vanilla. And that's why, Okay,
I have always wondered that it also does have a
little bit of a bourbony flavor to it. Yeah, it
kind of does. Most of the rest of our vanilla
supply comes from Mexico and Tahiti. The main flavor compound
in vanilla is called vanilla and it can be created
in labs pretty cheaply and easily. But there are over
(02:45):
two hundred and fifty flavor and aroma compounds in vanilla pods.
Experts talk about vanilla's TAROI yeah, so much to are
happening in these episodes. There are Tahitian vanilla has notes
of cherry florals and marshmallow. Madagascar vanilla has notes of
rum and bourbon, prunes and wood. And Mexican is a
(03:07):
little bit more subtle of a vanilla. It's got notes
of wood, spice and nutmeg and McCormick. I'm sure most
of you have heard of this. It's like that company,
one of the brands and spices and stuff. Yeah, and
they sell vanilla and they have a chart of vanilla
tasting chart and it's like a big wheel. And I
(03:29):
spent far too much time reading like all of the descriptions,
and I mean vanilla tasting. Why is that not a thing.
Oh it can it be a thing? Let's make it
a thing. Okay. There aren't too many orchids you can eat,
but this happens to be one of them. It's a
bit sensitive of a plant as well. It needs to
be in a tropical or sub chocol climate. Like seriously,
(03:51):
it's not able to grow ten to twenty degrees north
or south of the equator, or it's only able to
grow there. Yes, otherwise that would be like a lot
of vanilla we're looking at the different, the opposite problem.
It's native to the Caribbean and parts of South and
Central America, and the blooming season last a couple of months,
with a handful of fragile flowers of green or yellow
(04:14):
or white blossoming each day. The flowers are so fragile
that they can only be pollinated naturally in the wild
by a species of many pone b are possibly the
eu glossin bees. These are tiny little bees, and maybe
birds can pollinate them too, but either way, these pollinators
only exist in Mexico, which means that vanilla beans grown
(04:34):
elsewhere must be hand pollinated. That they are very often
hand pollinated in Mexico to to ensure production quantities. Some
expert farmers say that as few as five of the
flowers on any given plant should be pollinated in order
to achieve the best quality fruit. Mm hm oh and
uh did we mention the flower is only open one
(04:57):
day a year, one day year, one morning a year.
In fact, yes, the flowers closed by the afternoon. And
if they weren't pollinated in that too, any time, any
window so long, they just fall off and die. Yeah. Yeah,
no fruit, it's wild to me. Who yeah that The
(05:18):
flowers themselves, by the way, are very neutral y scented. Yes,
the fruit part, as the name pod implies, looks forty
pod like, reaching up to eight inches or twenty centimeters,
generally over a month to a month and a half
long on period, but it could be much longer, like
nine months. Um. Farmers harvest them when they're an unnipe
greenish goldish color, and at that point they're pretty bland.
(05:39):
Their Their flavor and characteristic rich brown color is developed
during this whole post harvest curing process that depends on
heat and enzymes in the beans and bacteria poop. Maybe, oh, Lauren, oh,
every time, it's exciting. Okay, so um. After vanilla beans
are harvested, they go through this production process of cooking, sweating, drying,
(06:04):
and crying, and growers around the world have developed different methods,
but but basically, first you sort the pods by length,
then soak them in hot water or expose them to
heavy sunlight to reach an internal temperature of about sixty
five degrees celsius or uh that's about a hundred and
fifty degrees fahrenheit to kill the beans um, stopping any
(06:24):
potential growth processes and killing off most bacteria or fungi
that might be floating around in there. Um. Then sweat them,
meaning you keep the beans hot and not too dry
and well covered at around like fifty degrees celsius a
k ae fahrenheit. This let's a number of ensmatic processes
begin to happen inside the beans. Their cellular structures begin
(06:46):
breaking down. It also allows a few heat tolerant bacteria
to thrive. You then dry the beans out very very slowly.
You want them to decrease to about fifteen of their
original water weight, depending on their size and quality, and
depending on the farming traditions. This may be done by
setting the beans out in the sun for a single
(07:06):
hour every day it's really intensive. The final step is
conditioning or curing the beans by keeping them warm and
kind of slightly humid, and this continues the flavor and
aroma development process. Once they're cured, vanilla beans can keep
for like two to ten years, depending on how careful
you are about it, and all of this research is
(07:28):
being done into the role of those heat resistant bacteria
in the development of these flavors. Um Tests and cultures
taken from a few different bean processors around the world
have found differing populations of bacteria, but a few strains
of Baccillus were commonly dominant, and scientists think that the
bacteria player role in helping breakdown cellular structures of the
(07:50):
vanilla beans, thus releasing some of the compounds or precurses
precurses to the compounds that give vanilla all of its
flavor and aroma. Um. The bacteria might also help process
some of those precursors into their final forms, and they
might help keep the temperature of the curing beans warm
enough to prevent the growth of unwanted fungi and bacteria.
(08:13):
The whole shebang takes like five to eight months and
is just super person nickety um. These traditional manual methods
are still used by many farmers and production firms, mixed
in with a little bit of like modern sterilization and
climate control technologies. Depending on the size and the swagger
of the operation. Um, you have to keep careful track
(08:34):
of each individual vanilla bean pods development, like any sign
of mold growth will send a being oh way back
to the killing stage. My goodness, because of all the
time and work vanilla takes. It's the second costliest spice
at around pounds. First. Oh, I'm glad you're asked. It's saffron. Oh,
(08:55):
of course, saffron. Of course. Whole other episode. Vanilla powder
is what you get after grinding whole vanilla beans, and
vanilla extract is chopped up and macerated beans aged in
solution to bring out the flavor. According to the FDA,
to qualify as pure vanilla extract, there needs to be
thirteen point three five ounces of vanilla beans for every
(09:17):
gallon while extraction is happening in alcohol. That primary flavor compound,
vanilla makes up only one too of any given vanilla bean.
Most of this processing happens in factories outside of the
countries that actually produced vanilla, which has traditionally meant that
the farmers who do the bulk of the labor see
(09:38):
a minority of the profits. That's a starting to change,
but it is slow going, unfortunately, thanks in part to
the need to add flavor to low carb or low
fat products and in part because we just love it.
Vanilla are Vanilla flavoring, to be more precise, is in
over eighteen thousand products worldwide. Yeah, and about that flavoring thing. Yeah,
(10:03):
bolt products with vanilla in the name. You know, your
vanilla way, for your vanilla pudding, even your cheap vanilla vodka.
They don't contain the real thing. No, orchids were harmed
in the making of those products. That's in part, at
least because the labor intensiveness and priceiness of vanilla, which
means we don't actually produce a whole lot of it,
about two thousand metric tons. It may sound like a
(10:24):
lot in the face of vanilla demand, it really isn't that.
The synthetic stuff we produce over twenty thousand metric tons
of that a year. The balance between naturally and synthetically
sourced vanilla is changing, though due to that whole marketing
and or consumer pushed towards all natural ingredients. In the
past five years, consumer interest has pushed huge companies like
(10:47):
Nestlee and Hershey's to switch back to naturally sourced vanilla,
which has driven the cost of vanilla beans up to
more than ten times what it used to be. Invitation vanilla,
by the way, is entire. They composed of the ever
mysterious artificial flavorings. Okay, okay, So in vanilla beans, you
get a molecule of vanillin by breaking down a sugary
(11:10):
molecule of of gluco vanillen, But there are lots of
other ways to get the same molecule. You can use
easter bacteria to to ferment like an oil from cloves
or this acid from rice brand. If they're fed one
of these things, these specialized and often proprietary microorganisms basically
poop vanillen um, those are considered natural vanillen. You can
(11:32):
also heat and pressure treat and alcohol that comes from
spruce trees to produce vanillen. As of the nineteen nineties,
a lot of the world's vanlon was actually a byproduct
of the wood, pulp and paper industries. Uh And you
can synthesize vanilla in a lab using an oil that's
a byproduct of the petroleum industry. Those last two are
(11:52):
considered artificial, and the petroleum version is the cheapest of
the lot by far, especially since wooden paper industries have
been working to reduce waste over the past couple of decades. Um.
I was reading ahead in the outline, and I'm very glad.
I was hoping that you would answer this question. Okay, alright, So,
(12:13):
so I heard that the artificial stuff is made from
beaver butt glands. Is that true? Is it? No? Well
there you go. Well, okay, well, it is true that
beavers produce a kind of vanilla scented substance in a
gland near the base of their tails. But believe it
or not, it's not actually financially viable to milk beaver
glands at a rate that would satisfy the world's interesting flavoring.
(12:36):
I know, weird. Um. This this stuff is called castoreum,
and beavers use it to mark their territory and to
impress humans by smelling just absolutely lovely. Beavers smell really nice.
I had no idea me neither. Castorium did see some
used in the eighteen hundreds as a perfume ingredient and
occasional food additive, especially during the time when beaver was
(13:00):
just all the rage in fashion and so they were
thus being hunted in large numbers. And it does still
show up sometimes in the fragrance industry, but it's pretty uncommon. Well,
there you go, question answered. I'm sure all of you
are waiting to know. Yes, in ice cream, which actually
does play a big part in the story of vanilla,
apart from the silly pole we wanted to throw in there. Um,
(13:23):
tastesters can tell the difference between vanilla and vanilla, and
the former being more distinct and flavorful than the ladder,
which often ended up with the descriptor bland or non
distinct attached to it. However, and things like cakes that
are heated, tasters generally couldn't tell the difference. Yeah. Oh,
and I did want to put in here that vanilla
ice cream is one of the few products here in
(13:44):
the US that the FDA says must contain natural vanilla
if it doesn't want to have to specify artificial vanilla
and its name. I was at the grocery store today
and I noticed this, and also so many things claiming
to have some vanilla beans in there. Anyway, the US,
with our notorious sweet tooth, is the largest importer of
(14:06):
vanilla on average five point four grahams a person, which
comes out to sixty million vanilla beans a year. Yeah. Okay,
so that's a lot. That's the intro. Yeah, oh, welcome.
This is one of those long and twisty outlines that
it's like, oh goodness, you never know, we're not I
will take you. Yeah, well, except we do know where
(14:27):
it's going to take us. Well, first of all, because
we wrote it. And second of all because right now
it's taking us towards a quick break for a word
from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsored. All right,
(14:50):
let's let's look at the history of vanilla. It's it's
hard to pin down. It's a difficult one. Yeah, because
vanillan does not leave behind a chemical residue like chocolate does.
Thank you chocolate. Um Matt being said, here's what historians
have pieced together about vanilla's history. So the Maya in
(15:10):
the southeast of Mexico and Central America were the first
to grow vanilla for use as a cacao flavoring as
as far back as six thousand BC. That's mostly for
for cocoa as a drink sweetened with honey, and researchers
think that vanilla was originally reserved for people of very
high political position. They put ground up vanilla orchid and
(15:33):
necklaces to ward off illness or other bad health stuff.
They used it as a fragrance, stimulant and insect or
pill in a medicine, mixed it with copal resin and
burned it as an incense, and of course in aphrodisiac
obviously obviously, However, the Totonac people in Vera Cruz, Mexico
are often cited as the first to cultivate vanilla beans
(15:54):
and to figure out that they became more flavorful when sweated,
primarily for dismal use. Wherein the Aztecs took over the
Totonac in the fifteenth century. The Totenac were forced to
pay tribute to the Aztecs in the form of thousands
and thousands of vanilla being, which they called black flower
after what happens to the flower once the fruit is harvested.
(16:16):
Unlike the Totonac, the Aztec used vanilla for flavor, especially
in the chocolate drink that they called chuckle attle. Did
I say that correctly, I think so excellent. The Totana
believed that vanilla was a gift from the gods and
a source of eternal happiness. Their mythology included the tale
of how the vanilla or kid came to be that
(16:37):
goes something like this. Once upon time, Princess nut fell
head over heels in love. Her father refused to allow
her allow her to marry said love, however, on accounts
of him being a puny mortal, so the couple eloped
no nattier not because they both were captured in Their
(16:58):
heads were chopped cleaning off, their blood soaked into the earth,
and from that spot grew the first vanilla orchid. The
Totonac sought as their duty to take care of and
protect these vines and to make them productive through the
marriage of vanilla. Which is a more pleasant way of
saying collination. That's a lovely myth. Yeah, well, I mean,
(17:19):
I mean there's heads getting chopped off. I mean, not
for the two people involved, but it's sort of sweet. Yeah, yeah,
kind of. When the Spanish arrived in fifteen nineteen, frequent
food stuff cameo. Hernan Cortez ran into it at Vera
Cruz and he also ran into the Totonac. Some sources
say that Montezuma served Cortez Cacao in fifteen twenty, while
(17:41):
others say that the Totonac teamed up the Spanish to
overthrow the Aztecs. Either way, Vanilla's name comes from the
Spanish vanilla, which translates to little pod or in Latin vagina.
There's actually a lot of references to vagina, including the
nine months, the possible nine months it takes. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, well,
(18:03):
I think we come back to that, okay, perfect um.
Around this time, vanilla was introduced to Asia and Africa
courtesy of the Spanish and Portuguese, and by introduced to
we almost certainly mean smuggled out too, because yeah, a
lot of the Mexican peoples were trying to keep a
lockdown on that kind of thing. Yes, they absolutely were.
(18:24):
Cortez brought Vanilla back with him to Europe, and in
fifte the first written description of vanilla was pinned by
Bernardino de Sahagun and Bernard Diaz. Europeans were totally in
adding vanilla in to hot chocolate as a replacement for
cinnamon once they accepted hot chocolate, which did take a minute. Yeah.
One Spanish fellow dubbed it a drink for pigs. Oh,
(18:46):
I know, it's just hot chocolate, right, that's such strong emotion.
They also mixed it with tobacco and used it as
a nurse s iimmulant and surprise and aphrodisiac. Some historians
think partly due to the vagina Latin root word, which
is the saddest reason ever to use something as an apronusiac. Yeah. Well,
I guess it's not the sadiest reason, but it's not
(19:06):
a great reason. It's not very well founded. In sixteen
o two, with hopes of appeasing Queen Elizabeth, the first
sweet tooth her apothecary in head of the apothecary, Hugh Morgan,
came up with sweetmeats flavored solely with vanilla. Queen Elizabeth
(19:26):
loved them, which meant that other people wanted to try them,
which led to vanilla spreading throughout Europe. Alcoholic beverages, tobacco,
and perfumes got the vanilla treatment. In seventeen hundreds and
seventeen fifty four, we get the first recorded use of
the word vanilla from botanist Philip Miller's book The Gardener's Dictionary.
A little less than ten years later, in seventeen sixty two,
(19:48):
a German physician named Bazaar Zimmerman published a work that
claimed that after a three and forty two impotent men
drank vanilla, they quote changed into astonishing lovers of it
at least as many women. Mm hmm. Interesting study. Yeah,
it was so popular as an aphrodisiac. It's it was
like the one for a long time, you know. It's
(20:12):
also if we're kind of plotting a food stuff bingo
card and uh oh yeah, and I think aphrodisiac has
to be on there. It absolutely does. Around eighteen hundred,
a French priest smuggled an orchid out of Mexico, Yes,
smuggled intrigue. Uh. Spanish controlled Mexico had a monopoly on
vanilla and the plants were under an export ban. But
(20:34):
this guy got him out to Tahiti and from there
the French would try to cultivate them in multiple locations
throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans. Vanilla intrigue. And this
brings us to someone else who makes a frequent cameo
and food stuff episodes. But first, one last break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back, thank you sponsoring. Yes,
(21:06):
so you'll never guess who's coming up again. Oh, you
probably will. It's Thomas Jefferson. Oh yeah, yep and his
many galivants. Across France, he encountered ice cream flavored with vanilla,
which had by then spread to much of Europe with
the help of Queen Elizabeth the First. Jefferson loved the
stuff so much he even wrote down a recipe for
vanilla ice cream fairly similar to how we make it
(21:26):
today that you can find in the Library of Congress
h Man. Jefferson brought back waffles and vanilla ice cream
and wine jellies from France. He's I like, despite a
number of other things, I would have totally gone to
his parties, like a waffle for all, like with vanilla
ice cream on the side and some wine jellies to
help you loosen up a bit. Yeah, that's a lot
(21:49):
of sugar, but it'd be fun at first. Yes, you know,
he didn't have Netflix back then. You had to make
your own fun. It's true. Also, he got the pods
from Paris, but they probably originally came from Central America.
So yeah, in eighteen o five, Vanilla pops Up and
its first cookbook, and it's one we've talked about before
(22:09):
HANDA Glasses the odch of cookery. It basically called for
adding vanilla to hot chocolate. And if you're seeing a
theme here, vanilla and chocolate, vanilla and hot chocolate. It
was used to cut like the bitterness right right, Yeah,
It was a popular way to cut the bitterness without
needing to add too much sugar exactly which the girl
was expensive. Right. Another cookbook we've mentioned, Mary Randolph's four,
(22:30):
The Virgin Housewife. It's not the Virgin Housewife. It is
the Virginia Housewife. I just have a aphrodisiac on the brain.
It came with the first written American recipe for vanilla
ice cream, and Europeans, of course for attempting to grow
their own vanilla, but they found the seeds they produced
weren't flavorful due to the total nach successfully keeping the
(22:50):
process of curing a secret, and also because the bee
needed for vanilla pollination could be found in Europe, or
at least the bee we think needed for vanilla poll nation.
Um Europe's increasing demand for vanilla, which they nicknamed chocolate drug,
caused a depletion of wild vanilla, and as a result,
the total Knock built vanilla farms in the seventeen sixties.
(23:11):
All of these things allowed them to maintain their position
as the primary producer of vanilla from the seventeen sixties
to the eighteen forties. Europeans were determined, however, to find
a way to cultivate their own flavorful of vanilla. In
eighteen nineteen, some Frenchmen sent vanilla beans to the French
controlled Reunion and Mauritius Islands, crossing their fingers had go there.
Years later, in eighteen forty one, on the island of Reunion,
(23:34):
twelve year old slave Edmund Albius figured out hand pollination.
Jean Michel Claude Richard, a famous French botanist, immediately to
credit U immediately for teaching Albeous this method, uh and
in later recountings of the story, some papers claimed Albous
was white. When slavery was abolished in eighteen forty eight
(23:59):
in impavary Ish, Albius died soon after, so he didn't
make any money off of what was basically like the
invention that made vanilla possible. Right. This also means that
possibly most of our vanilla supply can be traced back
to that first cutting of a vanilla orchid from Paris's
Jordan de plant possibly, which is cool to think. The
(24:23):
discovery of hand poll nation was the catalyst. First several things. First,
it toppled Mexico's monopoly of the vanilla trade. Second, the
French sent vanilla orchids, first to the Comoros Islands and
then to Madagascar with instructions and how to cultivate them.
The production of vanilla in these locations sailed past Mexico's
by seventy nine, and it only took until eight for
(24:46):
them to supply of the world's vanilla two hundred metric
tons worth. There were other factors that contributed to Mexico's
loss of their lead in the trade. Around that time,
its coastal rainforests were being stripped bare by the tropical
wood industry. A cedar and mahogany trees were part of
vanilla orchids natural climbing habitat, and suddenly all that was gone. Yeah,
(25:09):
and this just so happened to coincide with an exponential
increase in demand for vanilla as its solidified its place
as the preferred ice cream flavor, and with the eight
eight six introduction of a little beverage you might have
heard of coca cola. What it's part of that secret
recipe it is. It's one of the few things. So
was cinnamon. Uh, one of the few things that they
(25:30):
will admit is in there. Yep. The esteemed brain tonic
and intellectual beverage called for vanilla. Vanilla was added to
all kinds of things as the availability of it increased,
stepping back of it. Joseph Burnett soaked some vanilla beans
and grain, alcohol and water in eighty seven and got
vanilla extract and German scientists isolated the first synthetic vanilla
(25:54):
that vanilla in eighteen seventy four from cheaper sources like
governor yea, yeah, sure, yeah whatever. Um. In a case
of too little, too late, the Academy of Sciences and
Gastronomic Arts recognized the total knock for their role in
bringing vanilla and the process behind cultivating it to the
world in oh, I mean yeah, they did really good
(26:20):
job keeping it hidden for a while. Um. By some estimates,
by the time nineteen thirty two came around, of all
ice cream in the US was vanilla. Oh wow? Yeah,
a typhoon allowed to a substantial increase in Vanilla's market
price in the seventies, a price level they maintained and
(26:40):
told the cartel that had controlled Vanilla's pricing and distribution
of vanilla since the nineteen thirties fell apart. In nine,
that cartel was toppled by the International Monetary Fund and
an effort to boost global competition and vanilla intrigue. Indeed,
prices fell in the following years to twenty dollars aequila,
a decrease UH. This changed when market factors like the
(27:05):
boom and premium ice creams by companies like Ben and
Jerry's and Haggandas caused demand to increase some fifty from
n through two thousand UH. This was immediately followed by
another typhoon. Another typhoon struck in two thousand, Coupled with
political instability and regions that grew vanilla and bad weather
(27:26):
in general, this caused the price of vanilla to shoot
up to five hundred dollars tequilo and two thousand four.
By two five, the price is back down to forty
dollars quilo due to a number of factors like more
countries trying their hand at vanilla production and increased demand
for imitation vanilla. But as you can see, this is
a product subject to some serious pricing fluctuation. Oh yeah,
(27:50):
and that's actually been particularly intense in the past few
years because the demand for artificial vanilla um and also
taxation of natural vanilla by the government was so great
during the nineteen nineties that orchid farmers in Madagascar abandoned
their plantations. Real vanilla was not worth the cost of
production to them. This happened in Mexico to from the
(28:13):
nineteen seventies on. Wages were so much higher instituts and
oil industries there that yeah, vanilla production just did not
make sense. That flipped when those big companies like Nestlie
started buying up pods again, as suddenly there wasn't nearly
enough supply to meet demand and the price skyrocketed, especially
because all those farms had shut down and it can
take three to five years for a new or rebuilt
(28:35):
production to start producing pods. This has created some really
bizarre economic effects. The National Central Bank of Madagascar actually
ran out of the large bills that vanilla traders used
to pay farmers, with uh crops being stolen from fields,
some farmers harvesting pods too early to produce good quality vanilla,
(28:55):
and weather is still an issue, especially given the rate
at which climate changes messing up our weather patterns. Uh
cyclone that hit Madagascar this March of destroyed about a
third of the vanilla crop, pushing demand and prices even higher.
All of this means that some researchers are working on
developing genetically modified orchids that would produce more vanilla to
(29:17):
help offset some of these fluctuations. And another interesting science thing,
Oh yeah, two thousands six study found that vanilla was
effective in preventing bacteria quorum sensing, which is something bacteria
do that coordinates behaviors like virulence and antibiotic resistance. So
(29:38):
scientists think that vanilla intake could be useful in preventing
bacterial pathogenesis. Yeah, very very very early, but still oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's coorum sensing is really fascinating. It's basically bacterial communication
and lots of great implications there. That is, it was
really cool to run into you. Like I said, you
never know what a topic is going to take you.
(29:58):
Who knew we'd be talking about bacteria coorum sensing in
Vanilla episode, not me, but that brings us to the
present with Vanilla everywhere and all kinds of things and
our appetite for it apparently on ending. Yeah. Yeah, um,
so that's the story of Vanilla. It is. It is
quite a twisty turny one. Uh and kind of guys
(30:19):
probably know. But the reason that at the beginning of
the podcast why Vanilla is like vanilla bland and distinct
whatever is because it's it's everywhere, but also because it's
usually that invitation stuff or not right. Yeah, We've got
a discussion with one of your friends about this and
he had some strong feelings about how Vanilla was very
good and not vanilla at all. Yeah, you gotta watch
(30:41):
out for cook industry. Food industry friends find they have opinions,
chefs have opinions. Sometimes it's weird, very weird. Speaking of opinions, Yeah,
brings us to listener mail yes Els wrote in after
our Roman episode. When I was middle school, the most
popular snack around was to take a brick of instant ramen,
(31:04):
crush it up a little in the packet, and then
sprinkled the seasoning over it. We'd eat the little chunks
of dry ramen with seasoning like chips. It used to
be a school black market. Whoever could bring the best
flavor could sell it for like three dollars a pack,
which is a lot of money for a twelve year
old and also pretty big price. The kids who brought
(31:25):
the lime chili shrimp made bank. The school got so
fed up with it that they started buying cases of
ramen from Costco and selling each flavor of ramen for
like fifty cents, and that effectively killed the raman black market,
though not the amount of dry raman consumed. Where this
trend of eating dry dry Roman came from, I have
no idea. I'm convinced someone was playing a trick on
(31:46):
a gullible friend and it just kept going until the
whole school was doing it. I never heard of any
anyone else doing it, but I visited recently and they
still sell the raman for cents. That's that's hilarious to me.
In college, I said in a Roman episode, I'd pretty
much lived off for ramen, but when I didn't have
time to cook it, I would just like people would
(32:08):
see me walking around campus with the block. It was
a sad time and oh dude, in my life, Yeah,
I wasn't even putting the seasoning on it, So I
these twelve year olds were step ahead of me in
that that regard. Well, you know, we all do what
we have to. Yeah, and apparently at one point in
(32:28):
my life that was eating dry blocks of dry ramen.
I'm unseasoned. I'm glad that you've come a little bit
further than a little bit. Um Savvy also sent us
this note about our Vegemite episode. The amazing thing about
Marmite is its marketing scheme. The owners obviously know it's weird,
and even though I'm now twenty seven, I still vividly
(32:50):
remember the commercials for it from when I was a child.
Their phrase was marmite you either love it or you
hate it, and the commercials consisted of things like a
man kindly giving a homeless man of sandwich, only to
have it thrown at him a few moments later when
the man realizes it has marmite in it, or my
personal favorite, a man wakes up in the morning and
smells his milk and makes a face, realizing it's rancid.
(33:10):
Then he accidentally uses the knife his girlfriend spread marmite
with to butter his toast, chokes and begins to chug
the rotten milk to get the taste of the marmite
out of his mouth. Again. This was an ad for
marmite genius. I still laugh when I think of them.
That's pretty excellent. I mean, you gotta embrace you, gotta
(33:31):
embrace you, gotta know who you are exactly. Yeah, So,
thank you so much to both of them for writing us.
You can write us as well. Our email is food
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. We're also on
social media. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook
at food Stuff hs W. You can also find us
on Instagram at food Stuff. Thank you so much to
(33:53):
our audio engineer, Tristan McNeil and Dylan Fagin, and we
hope to hear from you, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way. M
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Anny Yes, and
I'm Lauren vogelbaumb and this is our not So Vanilla
Vanilla episode. That's right, we're tackling vanilla and we're going
to talk about why vanilla has got kind of a
bad connotation to its being born. Right, it's not at all. No, no, no, no,
and thank you too, listener Gina for suggesting. She also
(00:30):
sent in a book suggestion, Vanilla queen, we really need
to start up the food Stuff book Club. Oh yeah,
our our list of books is long and ever growing. Yeah,
because I don't read about food enough. No, let's definitely
start a book. Oh it would be delightful though. Okay, alright,
So vanilla, yes first, oh yes, Oh indeed. And most importantly,
(00:53):
it's the flavor of America's favorite ice cream. Yeah, which
I found a little surprising, but according to the Internet
ice Cream Association, so I guess they would know. Of
Americans favorite vanilla, followed by chocolate with an eight point
nine percent. I guess it's spread after after vanilla. Many
categories of ice cream flavor. My favorite, if I had
(01:16):
to choose a general one is chocolate, and my little
brothers was vanilla, and will you see it in some
pretty serious arguments about it, because I'd be trying to
convince him why he was wrong, like that, you're just frong.
Chocolate involves vanilla flavoring, and it's also got chocolate flavor
exactly right. It's science. It's it's scientifically proven that you're wrong, Bobby,
(01:37):
if you're listening. Um, So, vanilla it's a species of
the orchid family. The being itself comes from a seed
pot of the evergreen climbing orchids that sort of looked
like vines. Bonds that can reach up to one and
five ft are thirty two ms. Yeah, they kind of
getting stores. Specifically comes from one of three species, the
(02:01):
largest share being vanilla plant foila a k. Mexican or
Bourbon vanilla. But you can find vanilla to heat nous
a ka to heati vanilla, and sometimes vanilla pompona a
k a West Indian vanilla. About three fourths of vanilla
we by today comes from Madagascar and Reyjon, which is
an island off the coast of Madagascar. It used to
(02:23):
be named Bourbon, hence Bourbon vanilla. And that's why, Okay,
I have always wondered that it also does have a
little bit of a bourbony flavor to it. Yeah, it
kind of does. Most of the rest of our vanilla
supply comes from Mexico and Tahiti. The main flavor compound
in vanilla is called vanilla and it can be created
in labs pretty cheaply and easily. But there are over
(02:45):
two hundred and fifty flavor and aroma compounds in vanilla pods.
Experts talk about vanilla's TAROI yeah, so much to are
happening in these episodes. There are Tahitian vanilla has notes
of cherry florals and marshmallow. Madagascar vanilla has notes of
rum and bourbon, prunes and wood. And Mexican is a
(03:07):
little bit more subtle of a vanilla. It's got notes
of wood, spice and nutmeg and McCormick. I'm sure most
of you have heard of this. It's like that company,
one of the brands and spices and stuff. Yeah, and
they sell vanilla and they have a chart of vanilla
tasting chart and it's like a big wheel. And I
(03:29):
spent far too much time reading like all of the descriptions,
and I mean vanilla tasting. Why is that not a thing.
Oh it can it be a thing? Let's make it
a thing. Okay. There aren't too many orchids you can eat,
but this happens to be one of them. It's a
bit sensitive of a plant as well. It needs to
be in a tropical or sub chocol climate. Like seriously,
(03:51):
it's not able to grow ten to twenty degrees north
or south of the equator, or it's only able to
grow there. Yes, otherwise that would be like a lot
of vanilla we're looking at the different, the opposite problem.
It's native to the Caribbean and parts of South and
Central America, and the blooming season last a couple of months,
with a handful of fragile flowers of green or yellow
(04:14):
or white blossoming each day. The flowers are so fragile
that they can only be pollinated naturally in the wild
by a species of many pone b are possibly the
eu glossin bees. These are tiny little bees, and maybe
birds can pollinate them too, but either way, these pollinators
only exist in Mexico, which means that vanilla beans grown
(04:34):
elsewhere must be hand pollinated. That they are very often
hand pollinated in Mexico to to ensure production quantities. Some
expert farmers say that as few as five of the
flowers on any given plant should be pollinated in order
to achieve the best quality fruit. Mm hm oh and
uh did we mention the flower is only open one
(04:57):
day a year, one day year, one morning a year.
In fact, yes, the flowers closed by the afternoon. And
if they weren't pollinated in that too, any time, any
window so long, they just fall off and die. Yeah. Yeah,
no fruit, it's wild to me. Who yeah that The
(05:18):
flowers themselves, by the way, are very neutral y scented. Yes,
the fruit part, as the name pod implies, looks forty
pod like, reaching up to eight inches or twenty centimeters,
generally over a month to a month and a half
long on period, but it could be much longer, like
nine months. Um. Farmers harvest them when they're an unnipe
greenish goldish color, and at that point they're pretty bland.
(05:39):
Their Their flavor and characteristic rich brown color is developed
during this whole post harvest curing process that depends on
heat and enzymes in the beans and bacteria poop. Maybe, oh, Lauren, oh,
every time, it's exciting. Okay, so um. After vanilla beans
are harvested, they go through this production process of cooking, sweating, drying,
(06:04):
and crying, and growers around the world have developed different methods,
but but basically, first you sort the pods by length,
then soak them in hot water or expose them to
heavy sunlight to reach an internal temperature of about sixty
five degrees celsius or uh that's about a hundred and
fifty degrees fahrenheit to kill the beans um, stopping any
(06:24):
potential growth processes and killing off most bacteria or fungi
that might be floating around in there. Um. Then sweat them,
meaning you keep the beans hot and not too dry
and well covered at around like fifty degrees celsius a
k ae fahrenheit. This let's a number of ensmatic processes
begin to happen inside the beans. Their cellular structures begin
(06:46):
breaking down. It also allows a few heat tolerant bacteria
to thrive. You then dry the beans out very very slowly.
You want them to decrease to about fifteen of their
original water weight, depending on their size and quality, and
depending on the farming traditions. This may be done by
setting the beans out in the sun for a single
(07:06):
hour every day it's really intensive. The final step is
conditioning or curing the beans by keeping them warm and
kind of slightly humid, and this continues the flavor and
aroma development process. Once they're cured, vanilla beans can keep
for like two to ten years, depending on how careful
you are about it, and all of this research is
(07:28):
being done into the role of those heat resistant bacteria
in the development of these flavors. Um Tests and cultures
taken from a few different bean processors around the world
have found differing populations of bacteria, but a few strains
of Baccillus were commonly dominant, and scientists think that the
bacteria player role in helping breakdown cellular structures of the
(07:50):
vanilla beans, thus releasing some of the compounds or precurses
precurses to the compounds that give vanilla all of its
flavor and aroma. Um. The bacteria might also help process
some of those precursors into their final forms, and they
might help keep the temperature of the curing beans warm
enough to prevent the growth of unwanted fungi and bacteria.
(08:13):
The whole shebang takes like five to eight months and
is just super person nickety um. These traditional manual methods
are still used by many farmers and production firms, mixed
in with a little bit of like modern sterilization and
climate control technologies. Depending on the size and the swagger
of the operation. Um, you have to keep careful track
(08:34):
of each individual vanilla bean pods development, like any sign
of mold growth will send a being oh way back
to the killing stage. My goodness, because of all the
time and work vanilla takes. It's the second costliest spice
at around pounds. First. Oh, I'm glad you're asked. It's saffron. Oh,
(08:55):
of course, saffron. Of course. Whole other episode. Vanilla powder
is what you get after grinding whole vanilla beans, and
vanilla extract is chopped up and macerated beans aged in
solution to bring out the flavor. According to the FDA,
to qualify as pure vanilla extract, there needs to be
thirteen point three five ounces of vanilla beans for every
(09:17):
gallon while extraction is happening in alcohol. That primary flavor compound,
vanilla makes up only one too of any given vanilla bean.
Most of this processing happens in factories outside of the
countries that actually produced vanilla, which has traditionally meant that
the farmers who do the bulk of the labor see
(09:38):
a minority of the profits. That's a starting to change,
but it is slow going, unfortunately, thanks in part to
the need to add flavor to low carb or low
fat products and in part because we just love it.
Vanilla are Vanilla flavoring, to be more precise, is in
over eighteen thousand products worldwide. Yeah, and about that flavoring thing. Yeah,
(10:03):
bolt products with vanilla in the name. You know, your
vanilla way, for your vanilla pudding, even your cheap vanilla vodka.
They don't contain the real thing. No, orchids were harmed
in the making of those products. That's in part, at
least because the labor intensiveness and priceiness of vanilla, which
means we don't actually produce a whole lot of it,
about two thousand metric tons. It may sound like a
(10:24):
lot in the face of vanilla demand, it really isn't that.
The synthetic stuff we produce over twenty thousand metric tons
of that a year. The balance between naturally and synthetically
sourced vanilla is changing, though due to that whole marketing
and or consumer pushed towards all natural ingredients. In the
past five years, consumer interest has pushed huge companies like
(10:47):
Nestlee and Hershey's to switch back to naturally sourced vanilla,
which has driven the cost of vanilla beans up to
more than ten times what it used to be. Invitation vanilla,
by the way, is entire. They composed of the ever
mysterious artificial flavorings. Okay, okay, So in vanilla beans, you
get a molecule of vanillin by breaking down a sugary
(11:10):
molecule of of gluco vanillen, But there are lots of
other ways to get the same molecule. You can use
easter bacteria to to ferment like an oil from cloves
or this acid from rice brand. If they're fed one
of these things, these specialized and often proprietary microorganisms basically
poop vanillen um, those are considered natural vanillen. You can
(11:32):
also heat and pressure treat and alcohol that comes from
spruce trees to produce vanillen. As of the nineteen nineties,
a lot of the world's vanlon was actually a byproduct
of the wood, pulp and paper industries. Uh And you
can synthesize vanilla in a lab using an oil that's
a byproduct of the petroleum industry. Those last two are
(11:52):
considered artificial, and the petroleum version is the cheapest of
the lot by far, especially since wooden paper industries have
been working to reduce waste over the past couple of decades. Um.
I was reading ahead in the outline, and I'm very glad.
I was hoping that you would answer this question. Okay, alright, So,
(12:13):
so I heard that the artificial stuff is made from
beaver butt glands. Is that true? Is it? No? Well
there you go. Well, okay, well, it is true that
beavers produce a kind of vanilla scented substance in a
gland near the base of their tails. But believe it
or not, it's not actually financially viable to milk beaver
glands at a rate that would satisfy the world's interesting flavoring.
(12:36):
I know, weird. Um. This this stuff is called castoreum,
and beavers use it to mark their territory and to
impress humans by smelling just absolutely lovely. Beavers smell really nice.
I had no idea me neither. Castorium did see some
used in the eighteen hundreds as a perfume ingredient and
occasional food additive, especially during the time when beaver was
(13:00):
just all the rage in fashion and so they were
thus being hunted in large numbers. And it does still
show up sometimes in the fragrance industry, but it's pretty uncommon. Well,
there you go, question answered. I'm sure all of you
are waiting to know. Yes, in ice cream, which actually
does play a big part in the story of vanilla,
apart from the silly pole we wanted to throw in there. Um,
(13:23):
tastesters can tell the difference between vanilla and vanilla, and
the former being more distinct and flavorful than the ladder,
which often ended up with the descriptor bland or non
distinct attached to it. However, and things like cakes that
are heated, tasters generally couldn't tell the difference. Yeah. Oh,
and I did want to put in here that vanilla
ice cream is one of the few products here in
(13:44):
the US that the FDA says must contain natural vanilla
if it doesn't want to have to specify artificial vanilla
and its name. I was at the grocery store today
and I noticed this, and also so many things claiming
to have some vanilla beans in there. Anyway, the US,
with our notorious sweet tooth, is the largest importer of
(14:06):
vanilla on average five point four grahams a person, which
comes out to sixty million vanilla beans a year. Yeah. Okay,
so that's a lot. That's the intro. Yeah, oh, welcome.
This is one of those long and twisty outlines that
it's like, oh goodness, you never know, we're not I
will take you. Yeah, well, except we do know where
(14:27):
it's going to take us. Well, first of all, because
we wrote it. And second of all because right now
it's taking us towards a quick break for a word
from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsored. All right,
(14:50):
let's let's look at the history of vanilla. It's it's
hard to pin down. It's a difficult one. Yeah, because
vanillan does not leave behind a chemical residue like chocolate does.
Thank you chocolate. Um Matt being said, here's what historians
have pieced together about vanilla's history. So the Maya in
(15:10):
the southeast of Mexico and Central America were the first
to grow vanilla for use as a cacao flavoring as
as far back as six thousand BC. That's mostly for
for cocoa as a drink sweetened with honey, and researchers
think that vanilla was originally reserved for people of very
high political position. They put ground up vanilla orchid and
(15:33):
necklaces to ward off illness or other bad health stuff.
They used it as a fragrance, stimulant and insect or
pill in a medicine, mixed it with copal resin and
burned it as an incense, and of course in aphrodisiac
obviously obviously, However, the Totonac people in Vera Cruz, Mexico
are often cited as the first to cultivate vanilla beans
(15:54):
and to figure out that they became more flavorful when sweated,
primarily for dismal use. Wherein the Aztecs took over the
Totonac in the fifteenth century. The Totenac were forced to
pay tribute to the Aztecs in the form of thousands
and thousands of vanilla being, which they called black flower
after what happens to the flower once the fruit is harvested.
(16:16):
Unlike the Totonac, the Aztec used vanilla for flavor, especially
in the chocolate drink that they called chuckle attle. Did
I say that correctly, I think so excellent. The Totana
believed that vanilla was a gift from the gods and
a source of eternal happiness. Their mythology included the tale
of how the vanilla or kid came to be that
(16:37):
goes something like this. Once upon time, Princess nut fell
head over heels in love. Her father refused to allow
her allow her to marry said love, however, on accounts
of him being a puny mortal, so the couple eloped
no nattier not because they both were captured in Their
(16:58):
heads were chopped cleaning off, their blood soaked into the earth,
and from that spot grew the first vanilla orchid. The
Totonac sought as their duty to take care of and
protect these vines and to make them productive through the
marriage of vanilla. Which is a more pleasant way of
saying collination. That's a lovely myth. Yeah, well, I mean,
(17:19):
I mean there's heads getting chopped off. I mean, not
for the two people involved, but it's sort of sweet. Yeah, yeah,
kind of. When the Spanish arrived in fifteen nineteen, frequent
food stuff cameo. Hernan Cortez ran into it at Vera
Cruz and he also ran into the Totonac. Some sources
say that Montezuma served Cortez Cacao in fifteen twenty, while
(17:41):
others say that the Totonac teamed up the Spanish to
overthrow the Aztecs. Either way, Vanilla's name comes from the
Spanish vanilla, which translates to little pod or in Latin vagina.
There's actually a lot of references to vagina, including the
nine months, the possible nine months it takes. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, well,
(18:03):
I think we come back to that, okay, perfect um.
Around this time, vanilla was introduced to Asia and Africa
courtesy of the Spanish and Portuguese, and by introduced to
we almost certainly mean smuggled out too, because yeah, a
lot of the Mexican peoples were trying to keep a
lockdown on that kind of thing. Yes, they absolutely were.
(18:24):
Cortez brought Vanilla back with him to Europe, and in
fifte the first written description of vanilla was pinned by
Bernardino de Sahagun and Bernard Diaz. Europeans were totally in
adding vanilla in to hot chocolate as a replacement for
cinnamon once they accepted hot chocolate, which did take a minute. Yeah.
One Spanish fellow dubbed it a drink for pigs. Oh,
(18:46):
I know, it's just hot chocolate, right, that's such strong emotion.
They also mixed it with tobacco and used it as
a nurse s iimmulant and surprise and aphrodisiac. Some historians
think partly due to the vagina Latin root word, which
is the saddest reason ever to use something as an apronusiac. Yeah. Well,
I guess it's not the sadiest reason, but it's not
(19:06):
a great reason. It's not very well founded. In sixteen
o two, with hopes of appeasing Queen Elizabeth, the first
sweet tooth her apothecary in head of the apothecary, Hugh Morgan,
came up with sweetmeats flavored solely with vanilla. Queen Elizabeth
(19:26):
loved them, which meant that other people wanted to try them,
which led to vanilla spreading throughout Europe. Alcoholic beverages, tobacco,
and perfumes got the vanilla treatment. In seventeen hundreds and
seventeen fifty four, we get the first recorded use of
the word vanilla from botanist Philip Miller's book The Gardener's Dictionary.
A little less than ten years later, in seventeen sixty two,
(19:48):
a German physician named Bazaar Zimmerman published a work that
claimed that after a three and forty two impotent men
drank vanilla, they quote changed into astonishing lovers of it
at least as many women. Mm hmm. Interesting study. Yeah,
it was so popular as an aphrodisiac. It's it was
like the one for a long time, you know. It's
(20:12):
also if we're kind of plotting a food stuff bingo
card and uh oh yeah, and I think aphrodisiac has
to be on there. It absolutely does. Around eighteen hundred,
a French priest smuggled an orchid out of Mexico, Yes,
smuggled intrigue. Uh. Spanish controlled Mexico had a monopoly on
vanilla and the plants were under an export ban. But
(20:34):
this guy got him out to Tahiti and from there
the French would try to cultivate them in multiple locations
throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans. Vanilla intrigue. And this
brings us to someone else who makes a frequent cameo
and food stuff episodes. But first, one last break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back, thank you sponsoring. Yes,
(21:06):
so you'll never guess who's coming up again. Oh, you
probably will. It's Thomas Jefferson. Oh yeah, yep and his
many galivants. Across France, he encountered ice cream flavored with vanilla,
which had by then spread to much of Europe with
the help of Queen Elizabeth the First. Jefferson loved the
stuff so much he even wrote down a recipe for
vanilla ice cream fairly similar to how we make it
(21:26):
today that you can find in the Library of Congress
h Man. Jefferson brought back waffles and vanilla ice cream
and wine jellies from France. He's I like, despite a
number of other things, I would have totally gone to
his parties, like a waffle for all, like with vanilla
ice cream on the side and some wine jellies to
help you loosen up a bit. Yeah, that's a lot
(21:49):
of sugar, but it'd be fun at first. Yes, you know,
he didn't have Netflix back then. You had to make
your own fun. It's true. Also, he got the pods
from Paris, but they probably originally came from Central America.
So yeah, in eighteen o five, Vanilla pops Up and
its first cookbook, and it's one we've talked about before
(22:09):
HANDA Glasses the odch of cookery. It basically called for
adding vanilla to hot chocolate. And if you're seeing a
theme here, vanilla and chocolate, vanilla and hot chocolate. It
was used to cut like the bitterness right right, Yeah,
It was a popular way to cut the bitterness without
needing to add too much sugar exactly which the girl
was expensive. Right. Another cookbook we've mentioned, Mary Randolph's four,
(22:30):
The Virgin Housewife. It's not the Virgin Housewife. It is
the Virginia Housewife. I just have a aphrodisiac on the brain.
It came with the first written American recipe for vanilla
ice cream, and Europeans, of course for attempting to grow
their own vanilla, but they found the seeds they produced
weren't flavorful due to the total nach successfully keeping the
(22:50):
process of curing a secret, and also because the bee
needed for vanilla pollination could be found in Europe, or
at least the bee we think needed for vanilla poll nation.
Um Europe's increasing demand for vanilla, which they nicknamed chocolate drug,
caused a depletion of wild vanilla, and as a result,
the total Knock built vanilla farms in the seventeen sixties.
(23:11):
All of these things allowed them to maintain their position
as the primary producer of vanilla from the seventeen sixties
to the eighteen forties. Europeans were determined, however, to find
a way to cultivate their own flavorful of vanilla. In
eighteen nineteen, some Frenchmen sent vanilla beans to the French
controlled Reunion and Mauritius Islands, crossing their fingers had go there.
Years later, in eighteen forty one, on the island of Reunion,
(23:34):
twelve year old slave Edmund Albius figured out hand pollination.
Jean Michel Claude Richard, a famous French botanist, immediately to
credit U immediately for teaching Albeous this method, uh and
in later recountings of the story, some papers claimed Albous
was white. When slavery was abolished in eighteen forty eight
(23:59):
in impavary Ish, Albius died soon after, so he didn't
make any money off of what was basically like the
invention that made vanilla possible. Right. This also means that
possibly most of our vanilla supply can be traced back
to that first cutting of a vanilla orchid from Paris's
Jordan de plant possibly, which is cool to think. The
(24:23):
discovery of hand poll nation was the catalyst. First several things. First,
it toppled Mexico's monopoly of the vanilla trade. Second, the
French sent vanilla orchids, first to the Comoros Islands and
then to Madagascar with instructions and how to cultivate them.
The production of vanilla in these locations sailed past Mexico's
by seventy nine, and it only took until eight for
(24:46):
them to supply of the world's vanilla two hundred metric
tons worth. There were other factors that contributed to Mexico's
loss of their lead in the trade. Around that time,
its coastal rainforests were being stripped bare by the tropical
wood industry. A cedar and mahogany trees were part of
vanilla orchids natural climbing habitat, and suddenly all that was gone. Yeah,
(25:09):
and this just so happened to coincide with an exponential
increase in demand for vanilla as its solidified its place
as the preferred ice cream flavor, and with the eight
eight six introduction of a little beverage you might have
heard of coca cola. What it's part of that secret
recipe it is. It's one of the few things. So
was cinnamon. Uh, one of the few things that they
(25:30):
will admit is in there. Yep. The esteemed brain tonic
and intellectual beverage called for vanilla. Vanilla was added to
all kinds of things as the availability of it increased,
stepping back of it. Joseph Burnett soaked some vanilla beans
and grain, alcohol and water in eighty seven and got
vanilla extract and German scientists isolated the first synthetic vanilla
(25:54):
that vanilla in eighteen seventy four from cheaper sources like
governor yea, yeah, sure, yeah whatever. Um. In a case
of too little, too late, the Academy of Sciences and
Gastronomic Arts recognized the total knock for their role in
bringing vanilla and the process behind cultivating it to the
world in oh, I mean yeah, they did really good
(26:20):
job keeping it hidden for a while. Um. By some estimates,
by the time nineteen thirty two came around, of all
ice cream in the US was vanilla. Oh wow? Yeah,
a typhoon allowed to a substantial increase in Vanilla's market
price in the seventies, a price level they maintained and
(26:40):
told the cartel that had controlled Vanilla's pricing and distribution
of vanilla since the nineteen thirties fell apart. In nine,
that cartel was toppled by the International Monetary Fund and
an effort to boost global competition and vanilla intrigue. Indeed,
prices fell in the following years to twenty dollars aequila,
a decrease UH. This changed when market factors like the
(27:05):
boom and premium ice creams by companies like Ben and
Jerry's and Haggandas caused demand to increase some fifty from
n through two thousand UH. This was immediately followed by
another typhoon. Another typhoon struck in two thousand, Coupled with
political instability and regions that grew vanilla and bad weather
(27:26):
in general, this caused the price of vanilla to shoot
up to five hundred dollars tequilo and two thousand four.
By two five, the price is back down to forty
dollars quilo due to a number of factors like more
countries trying their hand at vanilla production and increased demand
for imitation vanilla. But as you can see, this is
a product subject to some serious pricing fluctuation. Oh yeah,
(27:50):
and that's actually been particularly intense in the past few
years because the demand for artificial vanilla um and also
taxation of natural vanilla by the government was so great
during the nineteen nineties that orchid farmers in Madagascar abandoned
their plantations. Real vanilla was not worth the cost of
production to them. This happened in Mexico to from the
(28:13):
nineteen seventies on. Wages were so much higher instituts and
oil industries there that yeah, vanilla production just did not
make sense. That flipped when those big companies like Nestlie
started buying up pods again, as suddenly there wasn't nearly
enough supply to meet demand and the price skyrocketed, especially
because all those farms had shut down and it can
take three to five years for a new or rebuilt
(28:35):
production to start producing pods. This has created some really
bizarre economic effects. The National Central Bank of Madagascar actually
ran out of the large bills that vanilla traders used
to pay farmers, with uh crops being stolen from fields,
some farmers harvesting pods too early to produce good quality vanilla,
(28:55):
and weather is still an issue, especially given the rate
at which climate changes messing up our weather patterns. Uh
cyclone that hit Madagascar this March of destroyed about a
third of the vanilla crop, pushing demand and prices even higher.
All of this means that some researchers are working on
developing genetically modified orchids that would produce more vanilla to
(29:17):
help offset some of these fluctuations. And another interesting science thing,
Oh yeah, two thousands six study found that vanilla was
effective in preventing bacteria quorum sensing, which is something bacteria
do that coordinates behaviors like virulence and antibiotic resistance. So
(29:38):
scientists think that vanilla intake could be useful in preventing
bacterial pathogenesis. Yeah, very very very early, but still oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's coorum sensing is really fascinating. It's basically bacterial communication
and lots of great implications there. That is, it was
really cool to run into you. Like I said, you
never know what a topic is going to take you.
(29:58):
Who knew we'd be talking about bacteria coorum sensing in
Vanilla episode, not me, but that brings us to the
present with Vanilla everywhere and all kinds of things and
our appetite for it apparently on ending. Yeah. Yeah, um,
so that's the story of Vanilla. It is. It is
quite a twisty turny one. Uh and kind of guys
(30:19):
probably know. But the reason that at the beginning of
the podcast why Vanilla is like vanilla bland and distinct
whatever is because it's it's everywhere, but also because it's
usually that invitation stuff or not right. Yeah, We've got
a discussion with one of your friends about this and
he had some strong feelings about how Vanilla was very
good and not vanilla at all. Yeah, you gotta watch
(30:41):
out for cook industry. Food industry friends find they have opinions,
chefs have opinions. Sometimes it's weird, very weird. Speaking of opinions, Yeah,
brings us to listener mail yes Els wrote in after
our Roman episode. When I was middle school, the most
popular snack around was to take a brick of instant ramen,
(31:04):
crush it up a little in the packet, and then
sprinkled the seasoning over it. We'd eat the little chunks
of dry ramen with seasoning like chips. It used to
be a school black market. Whoever could bring the best
flavor could sell it for like three dollars a pack,
which is a lot of money for a twelve year
old and also pretty big price. The kids who brought
(31:25):
the lime chili shrimp made bank. The school got so
fed up with it that they started buying cases of
ramen from Costco and selling each flavor of ramen for
like fifty cents, and that effectively killed the raman black market,
though not the amount of dry raman consumed. Where this
trend of eating dry dry Roman came from, I have
no idea. I'm convinced someone was playing a trick on
(31:46):
a gullible friend and it just kept going until the
whole school was doing it. I never heard of any
anyone else doing it, but I visited recently and they
still sell the raman for cents. That's that's hilarious to me.
In college, I said in a Roman episode, I'd pretty
much lived off for ramen, but when I didn't have
time to cook it, I would just like people would
(32:08):
see me walking around campus with the block. It was
a sad time and oh dude, in my life, Yeah,
I wasn't even putting the seasoning on it, So I
these twelve year olds were step ahead of me in
that that regard. Well, you know, we all do what
we have to. Yeah, and apparently at one point in
(32:28):
my life that was eating dry blocks of dry ramen.
I'm unseasoned. I'm glad that you've come a little bit
further than a little bit. Um Savvy also sent us
this note about our Vegemite episode. The amazing thing about
Marmite is its marketing scheme. The owners obviously know it's weird,
and even though I'm now twenty seven, I still vividly
(32:50):
remember the commercials for it from when I was a child.
Their phrase was marmite you either love it or you
hate it, and the commercials consisted of things like a
man kindly giving a homeless man of sandwich, only to
have it thrown at him a few moments later when
the man realizes it has marmite in it, or my
personal favorite, a man wakes up in the morning and
smells his milk and makes a face, realizing it's rancid.
(33:10):
Then he accidentally uses the knife his girlfriend spread marmite
with to butter his toast, chokes and begins to chug
the rotten milk to get the taste of the marmite
out of his mouth. Again. This was an ad for
marmite genius. I still laugh when I think of them.
That's pretty excellent. I mean, you gotta embrace you, gotta
(33:31):
embrace you, gotta know who you are exactly. Yeah, So,
thank you so much to both of them for writing us.
You can write us as well. Our email is food
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. We're also on
social media. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook
at food Stuff hs W. You can also find us
on Instagram at food Stuff. Thank you so much to
(33:53):
our audio engineer, Tristan McNeil and Dylan Fagin, and we
hope to hear from you, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way. M
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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