Vanilla

The fascinating and wide-ranging history of vanilla, from the sixteenth century to today Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavoringsso valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early daysand yet it is ubiquitous. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crme brle to Japanese purin. It is the quintessential ice cream flavor in the United States. Eric T. Jennings explains how the worlds only edible orchid, originally endemic to Central America, became embedded in the international culinary and cultural landscape. In tracing vanillas rise, Jennings describes how in the 1840s an enslaved boy named Edmond Albius discovered a way to pollinate vanilla orchids with a toothpick or needlean ingenious process that is still in use. This method transformed the vanilla sector by enabling the plant to be grown outside of its natural range. Jennings also looks at how the vanilla craze led to the search for now-pervasive substitutes, and how the vanilla lobby has fought back. He further unravels how vanillathe worlds most expensive crop and once considered its most refined fragrancecame to mean bland. This tale of botany, production techniques, consumption habits, and colonial rivalry connects the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, revealing how vanilla has become a potent symbol of the modern global village.