Vanilla aromatica / Vanilla / Orchidaceae (Orchid family)

Information

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Other Names

Tlilxochitl, Vanilla , Vanilla aromatica, Vanilla fragrans, Vanilla planifolia.

Description

Vanilla is a genus of orchids native to Central America. Vanilla is the only edible fruit of the orchid family, the largest family of flowering plants in the world. It is also the second most expensive spice after Saffron, due the extensive labor required to grow the seed pods used in its manufacture. Regardless of its high cost, Vanilla is widely used in both commercial and domestic baking, perfume manufacture and aromatherapy.

Scent

Vanilla has a complex floral aroma depicted as a "peculiar bouquet" and a flavor described as "pure, spicy and delicate" by author Frederic Rosengarten, Jr. described in The Book of Spices.
Psychologists and medical researchers were aware of our positive reactions to the scent of Vanilla long before perfume makers recognised its potential. In experiments where an odour universally regarded as "pleasant" is required, vanillin has been a standard choice for decades.(3)
A curious fact is that recently scientists have shown that a single gene that codes for one odor receptor determines whether someone perceives the pheromone androstenone (a key component in male sweat) as odorless, smelling like urine or sweet Vanilla.(4)

Aromatic Properties

The fragrance of Vanilla generates a sense of well-being and a feeling of relaxation. Its message of good temper and joy is antidepressant. Its aroma is euphoric and comforting, it attenuates bad temper and irritability, it loosens the tensions, diminishes insatisfaction and frustration, giving a sense of physical satisfaction related to the oral phase of the first infancy. For this reason the scent of Vanilla helps also to dominate nervous hunger, often caused by an affective emptiness, making us revive the primordial emotion of the totally satisfied baby after feeding. In fact, the aroma of Vanilla produces a beneficial regression, awaking in us the inner child. The fragrance of Vanilla also has a subtle aphrodisiac effect.

Contents

Natural Vanilla is an extremely complicated mixture of several hundred different compounds. Though there are many of these compounds present in the extracts of Vanilla, the one predominantly responsible for the characteristic flavour and smell of vanilla is known as vanillin.

Historical

The first to cultivate Vanilla were the Totonac people, who inhabit the Mazantla Valley on the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the present-day state of Veracruz. According to Totonac mythology, the tropical orchid was born when Princess Xanat, forbidden by her father from marrying a mortal, fled to the forest with her lover. The lovers were captured and beheaded. Where their blood touched the ground, the vine of the tropical orchid grew.
In the fifteenth century, Aztecs from the central highlands of Mexico conquered the Totonacs, and the conquerors soon developed a taste for the Vanilla bean. They named the bean "Tlilxochitl", or "black flower", after the mature bean, which shrivels and turns black shortly after it is picked. After they were subjected to the Aztecs the Totonacs paid their tribute by sending Vanilla beans to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.
Vanilla was completely unknown in the Old World before Columbus. Spanish explorers who arrived on the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the early sixteenth century gave Vanilla its name. The word Vanilla derived from the Spanish name of the spice, vainilla, a diminutive of vagina, perhaps motivated by the sheath-like shape of the fruit. Spanish conquistador Hernàn Cortés is credited with introducing both the spice and Chocolate to Europe in the 1520s. Attempts to cultivate the Vanilla plant outside Mexico and Central America proved futile because of the symbiotic relationship between the Tlilxochitl vine that produced the Vanilla orchid and the local species of Melipona bee; it wasn't until 1837 that Belgian botanist Charles Francois Antoine Morren discovered this fact and pioneered a method of artificially pollinating the plant. Unfortunately, the method proved financially unworkable and was not deployed commercially. In 1841, a 12-year-old French-owned slave by the name of Edmond Albius, who lived on Isle Bourbon, discovered the plant could be hand pollinated, allowing global cultivation of the plant.(1)(2)

Plant Description

Vanilla is a short-lived, tropical perennial orchid vine that can grow up to 10m. It grows in low mountain rainforests, humid lowlands, savannahs and prairies. Native to the tropical forests of Mexico, it is now cultivated in many other parts of the globe, such as Brazil, Honduras, Java, Africa, and the West Indies. This climbing vine has a thick, succulent stem, and entire, thick, smooth, bright-green, pointed leaves, 12-25cm long, and 5-10cm broad. They grow in a zigzag pattern clinging to the bark by aerial roots formed by each leaf node. The flowers are produced in axillary bunches of 8 or 10. They are yellowish-green with a yellowish-orange labellum and about 10 cm in diameter. Vanilla flowers all year round but blooms mainly from January to May. The fruit is a pendant pod, 12-25cm long, 3cm or more in circumference when fresh, and contains myriads of minute seeds. These pods, when properly cured and dried, are the Vanilla of commerce.

Legal Remarks

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• Norway

References

(1) Vanilla, Wikipedia
(2) Vanilla, Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages
(3) The Smell Report - Vanilla, Social Issues Research Centre
(4) The Scent of a Man, Scientific American