Vanilla

Where it comes from

Vanilla planifolia is an orchid native to the Mexican tropics. The earliest reports of its use are as a flavouring for the cacao drink of the Maya, and the people of north-central Veracruz are believed to have been the first to cultivate it¹. The flower has both male and female parts but a membrane keeps them apart, so it cannot pollinate itself; in Mexico it is visited by orchid bees, and the old story that a stingless Melipona bee is its pollinator has not held up. A 2024 study in Yucatán found that only 4.9% of flowers left to nature set a pod, and that almost all the world’s vanilla is pollinated by hand¹. The name is the Spanish vainilla, little pod².

How it travelled

Vanilla reached the botanical gardens of Paris in 1793, and in 1822 plants from France were sent to Réunion, then called the Île Bourbon³. There the planter Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont kept a single vine alive for twenty years; it never fruited. The problem had been solved on paper in 1836–37 by the Belgian botanist Charles Morren, but his fiddly method stayed in greenhouses².

Edmond was born into slavery in 1829 at Sainte-Suzanne. His mother died in childbirth; his father belonged to Bellier-Beaumont’s sister, and the boy worked in Bellier-Beaumont’s garden and learned horticulture from him^2,4. In 1841 Bellier-Beaumont found two fruits on his barren vine. The twelve-year-old said he had fertilised the flower himself, and, asked to show how, married its male and female parts in the way he had been taught to pollinate watermelons. Within days other planters came to see the technique, and Edmond was taken round the island to teach it to enslaved workers on other plantations². Réunion’s exports to France rose from 2 tonnes in 1858 to 200 tonnes in 1898, and by the end of the century the island had overtaken Mexico².

Edmond received nothing. He was freed only when France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848, took the surname Albius, and was refused the state pension Bellier-Beaumont asked for on his behalf. In 1862 the director of the island’s botanical garden claimed the method as his own and said “an ignorant child” could not have found it; Bellier-Beaumont wrote a rebuttal^2,4. Edmond Albius died in 1880, aged 51. A monument to him was unveiled at Sainte-Suzanne in 2004, and a school on the island carries his name. “Today,” the historian Eric Jennings says, “every vanilla bean you see on store shelves has been deftly pollinated by human hands”⁴.

The crop crossed the channel: by 1850 plants had been taken from Réunion and Paris to Madagascar, where vanilla became an important source of income³. The trade name Bourbon vanilla preserves the island’s old name³.

Today

Over 2018–2023 Madagascar produced 42% of the world’s vanilla, Indonesia 24%, and Mexico, Papua New Guinea and China about 6–7% each; Madagascar took the lead from Indonesia in 2013. World production in 2023 was about 7,400 tonnes⁵. Madagascar’s crop is concentrated in the SAVA region of the north-east, the districts of Sambava, Antalaha, Vohémar and Andapa⁶. Because so much of the supply comes from one cyclone-prone coast, Madagascar’s bad years produced two world price spikes, in 2001–05 and 2016–20⁵.

With apples

The pairing is European and American pastry practice rather than an Indian Ocean tradition: vanilla in the custard or cream served with apple tart, or in the syrup for poached apples. The bean’s job is to round the fruit’s sharpness, not to announce itself.

Recipe

Apples poached in vanilla syrup, for four.

Split a vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the seeds with the back of a knife.
Put pod and seeds in a pan with 600 ml of water, 100 g of sugar and a strip of lemon peel; bring to a simmer and stir until the sugar dissolves.
Peel four apples, quarter them and cut out the cores.
Slide the quarters into the syrup, cover with a disc of baking paper, and simmer very gently for 8 to 12 minutes, until just tender.
Lift the apples into a bowl with a slotted spoon.
Boil the syrup for five minutes to thicken it, then pour it over the apples, pod and all.
Chill for at least an hour. Serve on their own, with yoghurt, or over rice pudding. Rinse and dry the pod and keep it in the sugar jar.

Notes

The flower is open to pollination for a short window, which is why plantations are walked daily in season¹.
Réunion’s exports grew a hundredfold between 1858 and 1898².
Vanilla is often called the second most expensive spice after saffron².

Where the sources disagree

When vanilla reached Madagascar. The FAO report says plants were taken there “by 1850”³; several trade histories say Réunion planters introduced it to the island of Nosy Be around 1880. The two may describe different events, first plants and first plantations.
Who found the method. Morren had published a method in 1837; the Linnean Society credits Edmond with providing the key to the industry, and that framing is followed².