Vanilla comes from a beautiful plant called the mexican orchid.
This orchid is not grown for its beautiful, greenish-yellow flower. Few people give a hoot how pretty it is. This plant is grown because of the pod that appears after the flower dies.
These pods taste so good, we put them in ice cream, cakes, and puddings and call them vanilla beans. One Mexican orchid plant produces as many as forty or fifty vanilla beans each year.
The Mexican orchid is a vine that grows to six or eight feet and clings to the bark of a tree. Today, most vanilla beans are imported from Mexico, islands in the Indian Ocean, and Tahiti.
Next time you have a vanilla shake, think about the beautiful flower that helped make it possible.
Related Posts
-
Where does Vanilla Come From and Why is Vanilla so Expensive?
Real vanilla has always been expensive because wresting it from nature is a time and labor-consuming enterprise and because it is grown in faraway lands. And like cacao, cashew nuts, and coffee beans,…
-
Where Did Vanilla Come From?
Vanilla and chocolate have a lot in common. Both come from a bean, and both are natives of Mexico and Central America. In fact, when Europeans first tasted vanilla, they tasted it together…
-
Why Does Vanilla Make Food Smell and Taste So Good, But Tastes So Awful From the Bottle?
Vanilla extract is around 35 percent ethyl alcohol, which has a harsh, biting flavor. Whiskeys and other distilled beverages contain even more alcohol, of course (usually 40 percent), but they are lovingly produced…
-
History of Vanilla
The vast legions of American ice cream-lovers fall basically into two camps: those who favor chocolate, and those who champion its chromatic antithesis, vanilla. Although vanilla and chocolate, long the most popular ice…
