Vanilla
The plant.
· The vanilla plant is appeared as a liana being able to reach 15 m length. This plant is in general in the underwoods on trees. This plant belongs to the family of the orchises. One will obtain the vanilla pod starting from the flower.
· This plant is originating in Mexico. Vanilla was brought back to Europe by the conquistadors. It had immediately a great success.
· Today, the production of vanilla is done primarily in the Indian Ocean (Island of the Meeting, Madagascar, Indonesia, the Comoros).
Obtaining natural vanilla.
· So that the flower of the vanilla plant is transformed into fruit (vanilla pod) the flower must be fertilized. In Mexico, it is a small bee which carries out this operation. This bee does not exist elsewhere. For a long time, it was thus impossible to make vanilla elsewhere than in Mexico.
A slave of the Meeting found the solution by carrying out a handling on the flower. This work is long and painful because it must be made on each flower so that it can be transformed into pod. The lifespan of a flower is not that 12 midnight! It is necessary then a month so that the pod becomes ripe. There is then green vanilla with 18 € kg.
· These green vanilla pods are then treated (heating, perspiration, drying…). The whole of these operations takes almost a year. One obtains 1 kg of vanilla dried starting from 4 kg of green vanilla. Vanilla is worth 230 € then the kilogram, which makes of it the most expensive spice in the world after the saffron.
The vanilla flavor.
It is made of a multitude of different aromatic molecules (more than 150). The molecule mainly present is vanillin (90% of the whole of the molecules).
Vanilla in the trade.
· It can thus come from the vanilla pods. It is reserved for products of great quality because it is very expensive (mention natural vanilla on the label)
· One uses also the vanillin obtained starting from the small skin which surrounds the grains of rice (mention natural flavor of vanilla on the label)
· One can manufacture vanillin in laboratory. It is not expensive to obtain. One obtains vanillin identical to the vanillin of the vanilla pods. (mention vanillin of synthesis on the label).
Source: It is not Sorcier on Vanilla
