It was agreed nearly all ethnobotanists, anthropologists, and historians agree upon is that, although the vast majority of vanilla beans today are produced in the Island of Madagascar, the plant originally domesticated in southeastern Mexico.
Vanilla was used in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican for a variety of purposes: tribute, cacao flavoring, medicinal, etc., and by numerous indigenous groups such as the Maya, Aztec, and Totonac.
Vanilla beans were first picked from wild vines in the forest when they were ripe and already full of scent. Eventually the Totonac farmed vanilla vines and learned how to cure the beans.
Aztec aristocracy used it mostly as an after-dinner luxury. They never saw for themselves. This due to the plant hidden deep in the tropical forest far from Tenochtitlan, it was known only to the people who lived within its range.
The Aztecs added vanilla to a drink they called chocolatl, which include cacao beans, corn, honey and chili peppers.
Following Spanish colonization of Mexico and Central America, vanilla began a more international journey. Impressed by the taste and flavor of the drink offered by Aztec Indians, Hornando Corte introduces it to Spain. It was a cocoa drink mixed with vanilla.
An early record of vanilla’s various uses as medicine, perfume, and flavor is presented in the Florentine Codex, a series of books written and illustrated under the supervisor of the Spanish Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun between 1540 and 1585. In the books it was mentioned that Aztecs used vanilla in cocoa, sweetened with honey and sold in their markets.
The Spanish named the bean vainilla, which comes from a Spanish word from the ‘sheath’ since the cured pod looks like a miniature sword sheath or cover.
England’s Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, was said to eat and drink only food to which vanilla extract had been added, after he apothecary suggested that the spice could be used for purposes other than flavoring chocolate.
Beginning in the mid- to late eighteenth century, the Totonac of the Papantla region of the state of Veracruz were the first and only vanilla exporters in the world for nearly 100 years.
The Mexican monopoly on vanilla fell apart with the discovery of method for hand pollination of vanilla in Belgium in 1836.
Though it was documented during 16th century, the commercial cultivation started only in the early 19th century.
More than half of the world’s vanilla beans end up in the United States. Half of those are used in the dairy industry, mainly in the form of vanilla extract, or essence.
History of vanilla
