Just vanilla
26:28 Share

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in spiritually.

so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise.

It is Ryan here, and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like, are you a fist pumper, a woohooer, a hand clapper, a high fiver? If you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumba Casino. Choose from hundreds of social casino-style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly, plus free daily bonuses. So don't wait. Start having the most fun ever at chumbacasino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Casino.

Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. What's the most boring flavour you can think of? Vanilla? Vanilla cake, vanilla banana bread, vanilla anything.

It is ordinary, bland and plain. Think again. It's almost indescribable pure vanilla. It's unlike anything else. In this episode of The Food Chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander, we're learning to appreciate vanilla. I've had people come up to me to say they couldn't believe that that's what vanilla tasted like.

We're discovering the surprising story of this complex spice, how it went from forest floor to the plates of kings and queens to, well, it's everywhere. In medicine, in soap, in air fresheners, in cosmetics, in perfume. And we'll find out why this arguably overused and underrated flavour is still one of the most valuable and arresting fruits of the forest.

It was so surreal. The vanilla vine, it's almost covering more than 10 meters of tree tall, right on top of a hill. And I've never seen anything like that. It was amazing.

I was the smallest of all cousins, and the women in my family cooked together. This is Rosa Abru-Runkle, an associate professor at the New York City College of Technology and author of Vanilla, A Global History, a book she penned because of a childhood love of the taste. And so they used vanilla for desserts, like Dominican flan. They used it for rice pudding.

They're always in the desserts, Dominican desserts, you'll find vanilla in it. So there's an orange cream cooler that is made. It's pretty weird, but it works. And it's milk, orange juice with vanilla and sugar. This is basically a drink that is, you know, used to cool off.

So that's where my story with vanilla began. The story of vanilla itself began much longer ago, more than 2,000 years ago, in fact, in what is now modern-day Mexico, where the vanilla plant with its beans is native. It was discovered by chance. Somebody picked it up, this triple thing, and they adapted. They adapted vanilla. Now, one of the cultures that, Mesoamerican cultures, that adapted vanilla was the Taranac people.

The Toronac started adapting vanilla in year 600 CE. And they used, they revere this plant and the actual bean because they thought it was given to them by the gods. And the priest temples used it as incense. They mixed it with resin and they used the actual beans to cook with, to flavor with.

as well for stomach ache, for poison of snakes. So they had all of these things that were used with vanilla within the Mesoamerican cultures. The rest of the world knew nothing about it until the arrival of the Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes in the 1500s. He was actually invited by Montezuma, the king at the time, and he was invited to this big banquet.

In the palace, they noticed that the Aztecs were drinking this brew. And this particular brew, they were like looking at it and like they tasted it in the Aztecs call it soquetal. And for the Spanish, it was like, oh, this is a bitter brew. This is disgusting. How can this man drink this? And they also noticed that he was drinking 50 cups a day of this brew.

For the Aztecs, this was an aphrodisiac. Montezuma had a lot of wives and obviously he needed to keep up with demand. So this was an aphrodisiac for them. Key ingredients in this drink were chocolate and vanilla. Cortes brought both back to Europe and they were a hit, especially with the Queen of England, Elizabeth I. Elizabeth wanted to have it

With all of her food, because she believed it was an aphrodisiac, she had a young lover. She was 22 years older than he was, so she wanted to be sure that she was taking something to help her.

And as the influencer of the court, everybody else follows suit in having vanilla with their food. So that's the beginning of it. Vanilla was a very expensive taste, though, because it had to be imported from Mexico. The plant's pollinator was a tiny bee only found in that country. So although people tried to grow it elsewhere, the blooms failed to produce beans. In

Until, that is, a 12-year-old boy, Edmund Albius, who was enslaved on the French colony of Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar, began working in the gardens of a horticulturist, very old Belier Beaumont. Albius was watching Beaumont pollinate a watermelon plant, which had a male-female, and he joined them.

And then Alvius started kind of experimenting with a stick, a stick or a blade of grass. So he started going into the flower. Now the vanilla flower has both male and female inside. You got to put a stick in and as you pull it out, now you fertilize it. So lo and behold, Beaumont goes, what have you done?

I see beans here. This is a 22-year plant who's never had any beans. How did you do it? Beaumont gave Edmund Albeus his freedom, but he otherwise never profited from his valuable find. Edmund never really got credit. He got recognized later on. He died poor. He died at the age of 51, absolutely penniless.

And his invention or his discovery is a multi-million dollar business that he never benefited from. Today, Madagascar, the island nation next to Reunion Island, where Edmund Albus made his discovery, remains the center of the world's vanilla production. But the high price it can command has created other production centers too. On the Indonesian island of Bali, vanilla made an impression on a young Marisetuan.

I remember I experienced the burning irritation from the sap of the vanilla sapling and it was really, really itchy and that's imprinted in my head. And I remember my dad at that time had one piece of land that was actually still occupied by monkeys and

It's by the edge of the forest up in the mountain and nothing ever grow over there because a monkey harvests them first. And then he was sort of like jokingly and it took me, I was probably about four years old. He carried me in the back and on the other side he was carrying vanilla, vanilla vine and said like, let's just throw this vanilla over.

Forty years went by, and a vanilla boom and bust. My

Mare said vanilla production had caught on in Indonesia, but it had been grown too intensely, and disease and falling prices meant many people ended up losing money. Meanwhile, Mare had moved to England, and seeing the appetite for vanilla there, wondered if he could make a business out of it. He went back to that wild corner of land where he and his father had decades ago sown the vanilla seeds. It was so surreal.

The vanilla vine, it's almost covering more than 10 meters of tree tall, right on top of a hill. And I've never seen anything like that. It was amazing. I was just like, I didn't know this. I completely didn't know this, that vanilla can grow while covering a massive tree. And what does it look like? It's an orchid. The flower, if you like orchid, then you immediately will recognize, oh, this is an orchid flower.

But it's a vine that is creeping on a tree. Mare set about chopping the vanilla and moving it to a new spot where he could try to cultivate it. I have to transport them, carry them on my back with one of my relatives. And along the road, everybody seeing me carrying that, everybody was like, what are you doing? I said, I'm going to replant my vanilla again. And this is mine. But it takes time.

So first of all, out of this vine, you select about 50 centimeters long vine, cut them, and then put them under any kinds of tree in tropic, cover them with a little bit of mulch from the tree fallen leaves from the, what we call it, the host tree or the tutor tree. Just leave it there.

And hopefully in four or five years, the vine will start growing into about 10 meters or 12 meters and will start producing flower. Out of that, it will probably produce something like about 40 or 60 flowers in a bunches like a banana. Lots of flowers because it's not an indigenous orchid in Indonesia, but

So we don't have the bees to do the natural pollination like where it came from in Mexico. So human has to do a manual pollination. And this is actually very easy thing to do. For me as a kid, I used to go out and do that. It makes me feel

In love with something beautiful, you make a needle out of any thorns or any stems of coconut leaves or anything that you find or a little wood. It's very easy. You just tear apart a little bit and there's a stymus and a crown and then you just lift it a little bit and then press it back up to nine months and they'll be ready to be harvested and cured.

At this point, the green vanilla beans are odourless, tasteless and irritating to the skin. They're then blanched, sweated and left to dry in the sun for weeks. The final step is to put them in a conditioning box to allow the aroma to develop. It will take about four months of curing process. Gosh, what an involved process. And when you open the box after two months, what's that like? It's like...

The best vanilla ice cream. However, the delightful smell can attract unwanted attention. A few years ago, the price soared to $600 a kilogramme, in part driven by a fashion for natural flavours, as well as adverse weather conditions in growing areas. In Madagascar, the boom led to thefts and violence. The price is now $60 a kilogramme, much lower but still valuable.

Made, who today supplies UK importers Little Pot, says the crops are carefully watched over. There will be thieves, but when there is a sensitive time when vanilla is about to harvest and the price is good...

So usually the community will form like a neighborhood watch group and watching who's coming. Because there's still a lot of traders will come and offering to buy all kinds of crop. But at the same time, they're also doing, the community will say, oh, they're doing surveillance to see what they can steal or something like that.

The main threat, Mare believes, is that the farmers will be tempted to pick the sought-after beans too early, before they're ripe. Vanilla is a time-sensitive crop and a good harvest takes judgement. You're listening to The Food Chain from the BBC World Service.

World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in.

so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise.

Hello, it is Ryan. And we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino-style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses. So sign up now at chumbacasino.com.

That's chumbacasino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. I'm Ruth Alexander, and this week we're telling the story of vanilla. While it was once a spice favoured by kings and queens, today vanilla's reputation is as a kind of everyday flavour. Dare I say it? Nothing special. And it's not me saying that. It's the English Dictionary.

The word vanilla was adopted into English in the mid-17th century, drawing on the Spanish word beñia, meaning a small pod. This is lexicographer, etymologist and TV personality Susie Dent.

Since the 1970s, the adjective vanilla has come to mean plain, basic or conventional, especially of a computer program or other product. Something vanilla has no interesting or unusual feature. It is safe and unadventurous.

Originally, it was used with reference to sexual activity. But by 1972, we find such quotes as vanilla, rigid, conforming, goody-goody, as in this neighbourhood is too vanilla for the likes of us. All of these examples rest on the popular perception of vanilla as the basic or usual flavour of ice cream. It is ordinary, bland and plain.

Harsh. So how did vanilla become so vanilla? It's a consequence of the development of artificial vanilla, discovered in the 1800s, becoming widespread by the mid-20th century, as Rosa Abru-Runkle explains. One is shifted into the imitation.

And the imitation vanilla then got adapted to many products that we use in medicine, in soap, in air fresheners, in cosmetics, in perfume. So it became really ubiquitous and a victim of its own success. Correct. And that's why it's part of our daily lives and we don't even realise it. So it was that particular shift that caused vanilla not to be exotic anymore.

Almost 88% of the market of vanilla flavour is synthetic, chemically produced. And only 2% of vanilla is extracted from vanilla pods. This is Dr. Letizia Rossato, a researcher in industrial biotechnology at the Politecnico of Milan, Italy.

So chances are, if you think you're really familiar with the taste of vanilla, you're actually probably really familiar with the taste of synthetic or artificial vanilla. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. The main flavour of real vanilla comes from something within it called vanillin. We say that it's an aromatic compound. It's a white solid which is soluble in water. Vanillin is the main responsible for the flavour. And this is the secret to making artificial vanilla. Vanillin can be extracted from all sorts of, to me, surprising sources.

Gosh, so you can get the...

the taste and the smell of vanilla from petrol. Yeah, yeah, because they take some molecules from oil-based materials and then they transform them. But then the scientific community found out that the same molecules could be also extracted from natural sources, such as biomasses, grist and grain, rice. And so there was a switch in using them. This boggles my mind, really, because...

You know, if I think of what rice tastes like, it doesn't seem to taste like vanilla to me. Vanillin is not contained inside the biomass. The biomass contains some molecules, such as glucose, that can be converted into vanillin. How is it converted? In the synthetic pathway through chemical reactions such as oxidation, reduction and many others. But they can be also converted using biotechnological routes.

You use microorganisms to transform a molecule into another. For example, bacteria, fungi, to obtain the molecule of interest. I've heard of the possibility of vanillin being extracted from recycled plastic bottles. Is that going to be a thing?

Plastic bottles are mainly made by polyester and if you extract some molecules then you can convert them into vanillin. That seems like quite a neat solution to the problem of plastic bottles. Yes, but I think this is still a proof of concept. If you're tasting something flavoured with vanillin, will that differ from something that is flavoured with a real vanilla pod?

I don't think so. I think that if you taste the vanillin extracted from vanilla pods and a natural base or a synthetic one, you cannot tell the difference. The only exception I could think is about the intensity of the flavour. Maybe the one extracted from the vanilla pods is more intense. I feel like we have a complicated relationship with vanilla. It's everywhere, but...

But it's also got a reputation as being a bit boring, but we're consuming it in great quantities and we don't really know where it comes from, never really given it much thought. We just sort of, it's always there and we take that for granted. Yeah, also I think that sometimes you don't even know that the vanilla is present in what you are eating.

Letizia Rosato in Milan. Well, it's about time I visited an ice cream parlour. And in Ginger's Comfort Emporium in Manchester, England, it's my pleasure to meet some vanilla fans. I actually find it a bit more than plain. I love vanilla flavour things. Yeah. Why?

It has a kind of warmth to it, I would say, vanilla flavour. And it feels homely. I think it's something that I've grown up with, so it's a very familiar taste. So for me, it tastes like childhood and memories and fun. This is the thing, it has a bad rap, but actually it's also very popular. It goes with a lot of things. Today, vanilla is not on the menu here, but on other occasions, would you come here and pay good money for a slap-up vanilla ice cream dish? Yes, I would. Yeah.

Could I just ask you what you think of vanilla? Vanilla is delicious. I like vanilla. Because some people think it's boring, plain, like they would look at a menu like this and go for the more exotic-seeming flavours. But for you, what's...

What's the appeal? It just tastes nice. I just like vanilla. I scream. I put vanilla in everything when I bake. Vanilla cake, vanilla banana bread, vanilla anything. I've never done that before. Vanilla, put it in baking like that. Vanilla banana cake. What sort of quality does it give the baking? I'm very into health and I try to...

eat as cleanly as possible so because vanilla beans is more of a natural taste coming from the earth it's easy to add that into my baking and make it taste sweet nice and be healthy

So it's a way of sweetening food without adding sugar? Yeah, 100%. It's worth the extra expense for you? Yeah, it's always health is worth all the money in the world. If you want to be the best version of yourself, get the vanilla bean instead of the artificial sweetener. I'm berated it gets a bad rep.

I used it as an adjective. I think that's a false thing. Actually, vanilla, when you've got the vanilla pods, is delicious. Is this, yeah, extra meaning to vanilla, which means in the English language plain, bland? And you say no. No, no, no. Vanilla as like a pod is delicious or derated. How would you describe it to somebody who's sitting there thinking, what?

Is she talking about? Like smooth, maybe slightly smoky. How do you like to have vanilla? What vanilla infused dishes do you eat? I like a vanilla syrup in coffee and I like good vanilla ice cream. You mean real vanilla? Yeah, when you can see the vanilla in it.

And then white chocolate tends to be vanillary, so, yeah, some good white chocolate. And what about synthetic, artificial vanilla flavour? I can cope with it. You can taste the difference. But you still like it? Yeah, yeah, still like it.

How about you? I'm actually the opposite. I prefer the fake vanilla. So if I see an ice cream with the real vanilla pods in it, I don't like that. I prefer the artificial vanilla and specifically the vanilla syrup that you put in espresso martinis. Why do you prefer that? I don't know. I think I find the real vanilla a bit just too rich. But yeah, I do agree it gets a bad rep. Poor old vanilla. Do you think it's due a revival?

Yeah, I think if it's combined with another flavour, I probably would choose it. So I think maybe that's its way to come back, is get paired with something else, and then people can rediscover it. WHISTLE BLOWS

Here behind the counter is... Tom Edwards. Thank you very much for having us today. So, looking at today's specials, raspberry rose and chocolate, stracciatella. You've got chocolate ice cream, strawberry sorbet, blackberry and licorice, vegan ice cream, malted coconut milk. But where's the vanilla? I don't know.

Vanilla's a bit of a difficult one for us. We sort of specialise in ice cream that's a little bit different, and most vanilla ice creams don't actually contain any vanilla at all. So it's hard to get the real deal? It's very hard and also very expensive. One vanilla pod could be £7. So if you wanted to make a large quantity of ice cream, or if you wanted to make a pound of ice cream, you could need £2 or £3.

pods of vanilla, which is £21. OK, that's about US$27. Which is a scary amount of money. Vanilla pods are unbelievably expensive and a lot of the vanilla that you buy in the regular shop is artificial. It doesn't come from a vanilla pod. So if you put vanilla ice cream flavoured with real vanilla on the menu, people aren't necessarily going to be willing to pay the price you'd have to charge, right?

No, and that's the thing. If somebody comes and they just see vanilla, they don't think of it as being a strong flavour or something different. Whereas before I started working here, I felt like that. But when I started making the vanilla, it totally changed my mind on what vanilla should taste like. And it's now one of my favourite flavours that we do. So basically, people coming here don't want to pay around US$6 for a scoop of vanilla. They want something more exciting, exciting.

Yeah, I think so, which is, I think, a bit of a shame because I think it's quite difficult sometimes to convince people to have a vanilla ice cream. But when you do, particularly when it's proper Madagascan vanilla, people can't believe some people who try it and they think it's a regular vanilla. I've had people come up to me in our ice cream vans and they come back just to say they couldn't believe that that's what vanilla tasted like.

I thought it was something totally different. It blows their mind. So go on, make the case for it. What would it taste like? It's not overly sweet, but it's sort of got this sort of slight savoury hit to it, particularly when you cook it in with an ice cream, because you have what's almost a bark-like texture. It's almost indescribable pure vanilla. It's unlike anything else. So do you think we need to, like consumers need to,

Think again about vanilla, think differently, appreciate it more, be willing to spend on it. Absolutely. I also think it doesn't help that if you want to explain something as being boring or dull, you call it vanilla, which I think is a travesty because it's anything but.

Poor old vanilla. No, I know. It's heartbreaking, isn't it, really? I do find that other people come and say they just want vanilla. I've never had anybody come in and say, oh, I just want a strawberry sorbet or I just want a chocolate ice cream, which I do think is a shame because I do think the vanilla is so much nicer than chocolate ice cream. Controversial, I know. But as a base flavour, I think it certainly has something more to it.

Tom Edwards, thanks to him and to everyone we spoke to. Are there any other flavours you think have been unfairly maligned and are due a revival? Let us know by emailing thefoodchain at bbc.co.uk. From me and the rest of the team, Hannah Bewley and Nina Pullman, thanks for listening and join us again next week. When you're young, it feels like anything is possible. Maybe you're a little hot-headed, but your optimism lifts you up.

And your righteous fury can be rocket fuel, propelling you to fight for what's right. You might make choices that put you in danger. You might even make history. I'm Nicola Coughlan. This is History's Youngest Heroes. Rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth. Being young, maybe she didn't think too much. She thought, right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself.

12 stories of extraordinary young people from across history. There's a real sense of urgency in them. That resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now. Including a young man called Nelson Mandela.

A firebrand who led the defiance campaign against apartheid. Break segregation laws, ignore curfews, enter the door for white people at the post office, stand on the white side of the platform at the train station, and it's decided that black people are going to do this en masse. And Lakshmi Bhai, the Rani of Jhansi.

India's warrior queen. She was a small woman, leading her troops astride a horse, sword in each hand, taking on the might of the entire British Empire. History is lit up by young people who act on instinct and stick to their principles. Like Julian of Norwich, one of the first women to write in the English language. A trailblazer, but

But at a cost. Why would somebody choose to have themselves blocked up into a tiny little cell with limited contact with the outside world, out of choice? And Lady Jane Grey, queen for nine days, who refused to give up her faith and chose to face the executioner's axe. You have someone who is guilty

knowingly risking death and then ultimately knowingly taking death because there is something that matters more to them than their life itself. And that's a fundamentally heroic position. These are tales of saints, athletes, Hollywood superstars and pioneers. Some heroes are household names. Some have been all but forgotten, like Vasili Arkhipov.

A Soviet naval officer whose extraordinary courage helped save the world from nuclear catastrophe. Well, sticking to your guns on that submarine in that heat, that take guts. That really takes guts. History made by young people. Follow History's Youngest Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, it is Ryan, and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino-style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere, with daily bonuses. So sign up now at chumbacasino.com.

That's ChumbaCasino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.