69. The Boy Who Solved Vanilla

by Diana S. |

We’re back! After a big move, which required the dismantling and relocation of the trusty recording studio (a.k.a. Diana’s closet), I’m excited to record in my new space! 

Next month is the show’s sixth anniversary – I know, right?!! – and I’m asking YOU to submit questions for a special listener Q&A episode. You can contact me right here. Otherwise, send me a question on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter! 

After my last episode about potatoes, I figured I’d follow up with a little dessert. Today, let’s learn about one of the most valuable and mysterious plants on earth, the dizzying journey it made from its native homeland to its most famous outpost, and the unlikely character who unlocked its secrets. This plant’s intoxicating flavor is so widely enjoyed, and so universally incorporated into dishes around the world, that its name has become a byword for the everyday and boring. This is extremely unfair, since we’re talking about one of the world’s most labor-intensive and delicate plants, the only edible orchid on earth. That’s right: this week, we’ll learn about the sultry secrets of vanilla.

Episode 69: “The Boy Who Solved Vanilla”

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Edmond Albius, the boy who unlocked vanilla

 

Watch “Edmond’s gesture” in action in this video of vanilla hand-pollination, still used for the production of essentially all commercial vanilla in the world.

See the humble melipona bee, which naturally fertilizes vanilla plants in Mexico.

Transcript

Bienvenue and welcome back to the Land of Desire. I’m your host, Diana, and this is the show’s first episode ever recorded outside of a closet! Just in time for the podcast’s fifth anniversary next month, I’m finally settled into my new apartment, and I’m working out the kinks of recording in a new space. I’ll be ordering some more recording equipment to really set up the space, so I beg your patience if this month’s sound quality is below average. It sounded nicer when I was essentially recording an episode underneath a pile of coats, but it’s a little easier on your host to sit in a chair, you know?
 
Before I jump into today’s episode, a quick announcement: next month is the fifth anniversary of this podcast! I know, right? I’m going to celebrate with a big of a mixup – it’s been a few years since I did a Q and A episode, and there are a LOT more listeners nowadays. Between now and the end of the month, please send me your questions – these can be questions about subjects discussed in previous episodes, questions about the podcast’s production, or even just questions about me. You can send me questions through Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, or use the contact form on the show’s website, thelandofdesire.com. I look forward to answering my favorites in next month’s episode! Okay. On with the show.
 
Perhaps I love a theme, perhaps I’m just hungry, but this month I’m continuing the theme of curious French food history, but we’re moving as far away from the damp, gloomy soil of l’Hexagone and traveling all the way to the balmy shores of the Indian Ocean. We’ll learn about one of the most valuable and mysterious plants on earth, the dizzying journey it made from its native homeland to its most famous outpost, and the unlikely character who unlocked its secrets. This plant’s intoxicating flavor is so widely enjoyed, and so universally incorporated into dishes around the world, that its name has become a byword for boring. This is extremely unfair, since we’re talking about one of the world’s most labor-intensive and delicate plants, the only edible orchid on earth. That’s right: this week, we’ll learn about the sultry secrets of vanilla.
 
In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes reached the shores of Mexico. After an arduous journey into the interior, that November, Cortes and his straggling band of 250 Spanish soldiers reached the splendor of Tenochtitlan, (Ti-NOSHE-titlan) the glorious capital of the Aztec Empire. A city of gardens, floating out of a great lake, it must have appeared like something out of a dream. The emperor Montezuma allowed these pathetic strays inside his paradise, and walled them in near his zoos and gardens. For nine months, the Spanish fleet were simply another curiosity in the emperor’s collection. Invited to court, one of the Spanish soldiers observed another one of those curiosities: “a drink made from the cocoa plant, in cups of pure gold” which was “frothed up…and served with great reverence.” The xocoatl or “bitter water” was an extraordinary colonial triumph, a testament to the extent of Montezuma’s rule. Throughout the Aztec empire, territories paid tribute in the form of local produce. Xocoatl (SHO-coe-ah-ttle) was a mixture of these tributes: maize, honey, chili peppers, the cacao beans of course, and one ingredient which brought the whole dish together, a tribute from the Totonac people which they called xa’nat (CHA-nat) an orchid which grew wild in their forest-covered mountains. The Aztecs accepted the mysterious orchids and their beans, and used them in great quantities for their special xocoatl, but they had no idea how the Totonac people grew or harvested the plant. Once the Aztec empire fell, and Spain began its long age of colonial exploitation, they continued Montezuma’s practice of simply demanding vanilla beans, without ever acquiring the knowledge of their cultivation. Before long, vanilla made its way to Europe as part of the so-called Columbian exchange and became a favorite of the continental aristocracy. One early fan was the aging Queen Elizabeth I, who learned about the exotic bean from her apothecary. That same apothecary sent a few beans to a French botanist he knew, Charles de l’Ecluse, whose written description of the plant in his book is the first chapter of France’s history with vanilla.
 
While the Totonac continued to refer to their local plant as xa’nat, the Spanish referred to the orchid’s dark fruits as “little pods” or “vainilla” – a word derived from the Latin vagina, and if you’ve ever seen a Georgia O’Keefe painting of an orchid, you’ll understand why. Despite the spicy etymology, “vanilla” didn’t really catch on until the 1650s, and by the end of the century “vanilla” made its debut in French law, as part of an edict saying that all vanilla not grown in France must be sold by specific merchants paying specific fees and bringing their cargo through specific ports. Well, unfortunately for French gourmands on a budget, there was no other kind of vanilla – simply all of the vanilla in the world came from Mexico. Scarcity and competition launched a centuries long quest to break Spain’s monopoly on the mysterious orchid – but she wasn’t giving up her secrets anytime soon.
 
If you’re ever lucky enough you encounter a vanilla orchid in the wild, you probably won’t even realize it. Unlike its showier cousins, the vanilla plant is a rather unassuming vine which likes to drape itself over tree branches in humid mountain valleys. Its flowers are rather small, with whitish yellow petals, and the most identifiable thing about vanilla is utterly absent: a vanilla flower doesn’t smell like vanilla! It’s a nice floral scent, but nothing you’d associate with root beer floats or birthday cake. 
 
For the first two hundred years or so, all vanilla plants which made a live crossing of the Atlantic were basically just duds. Europeans were going greenhouse-crazy, and every horticulturist worth his stuff had a steamy shed on his estate where, at least theoretically, conditions ought to produce some beans. But it never worked! Even as the demand for vanilla grew and grew, Europeans simply couldn’t get the plant to do anything. It wasn’t until 1806 that an Englishman announced that his vanilla plant was, in fact, blossoming! The event attracted crowds, and that lucky plant would lay the groundwork for widespread vanilla cultivation. But in 1806, everyone squeezing into that sweltering greenhouse to look at these long-awaited blossoms had only one question on their mind: how do you turn the blossoms into beans?
 
Though the Europeans didn’t realize it for many years, they’d failed to notice the Mexican vanilla plant’s best friend: the extra-tiny orchid bee. These humble heroes of Central America do the delicate work of pollinating vanilla plants in the wild. Bees rootle around inside the delicate orchid, covering their furry bodies with pollen which then shuffles off into the plant’s ovaries. The ovaries swell up into a familiar bean shaped fruit, each one containing thousands and thousands of tiny seeds. Without bees, Europeans were stuck with some pretty white petals and not much else to show for all their gardening. It would take another half century and a journey of 6,000 miles before the mystery was solved once and for all – by a very unlikely person.
 
 
THE SPICE HUNTERS
 
For three hundred years, spices ruled the world. An insatiable appetite for exotic flavors drove Europeans to every corner of the earth, where they’d go to any lengths to secure a reliable supply of some spice or another. It was high-risk, high reward stuff: spice hunting meant perilous sea journeys, pirates, and indigenous populations who didn’t feel like handing over the goods at the end of a gun. But the most dangerous part of being a spice hunter? Other spice hunters, of course. Competition was fierce, and nations were focused on the long view: if you sailed into port with a hull full of cinnamon, you were a rich man; but if you sailed into port with a hull full of cinnamon tree saplings? You were a national hero. For fifty years, the most exciting spice hunter in the world was a French man with a superbly perfect name for the job: Pierre Poivre, a.k.a. Peter Pepper.
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If you wanted a life of adventure, you either joined the navy and sailed around the world or you became a missionary and sailed around the world. Pierre Poivre started out as a Jesuit missionary, and spent his twenties sailing around modern day Vietnam, China, and Macau. Poivre fell in love with China, particularly Chinese agriculture, and he spent time that may have been intended for studying the Bible studying terraced farms and spice markets. By 1745, Pierre turned 25 and gave up any pretense of godliness – to the relief of the other Jesuits, who kept kicking him out of assignments and strongly hinting that he ought to return home. But Pierre had tasted adventure and had no intention of a quiet life. He volunteered to join the French East India Company, where he assured everyone that he’d be able to obtain the spices – and the spice plants – France so desperately desired. The Company agreed to take him on, but they insisted on sending him back to the motherland for his official assignment. On the way back, traveling with two other French ships off the coast of Sumatra, the French fleet was canceled by a bunch of English ships. If Pierre wanted adventure, here it was: a fantastic battle played out on the seas, and midway through the fight, Pierre was hit by a cannonball. Pierre’s right arm was amputated, and he was forced to recover in prison, held in the Dutch port of Batavia, or as we know it, Jakarta. Eventually the French sailors were released and hitched a ride back to Europe by way of India. All along the way, Pierre learned everything he could about the spice trade from Dutch, French, and English merchants, not to mention the locals. Pierre learned everything there was to know about everything there was to acquire: cotton, sugar, coffee, batik printed cloths, coconuts, and of course spices. By the time he made it back to to meet his new bosses in person for the first time, Pierre’s proposition was simple: if you want to break the Dutch monopoly on nutmegs, I’m your man. I know everything there is to know, and I’ll stop at nothing until France can grow nutmeg trees of her own. 
 
This was exactly what France wanted to hear. France was in the middle of a million costly wars, and soon she’d embark on the stupidest one yet – the so-called French and Indian War, which would cost the crown its best territory in Canada, Louisiana and India. France needed money, and what better way to make money than to grow your own versions of the most lucrative substances on earth?
 
So, in 1748, France sent Pierre on a mission to acquire spice plants for its newest territories in the Indian Ocean: the ile de France, now known as Mauritius, and the ile de Bourbon, now known as Réunion. The Dutch had a monopoly on nutmeg and cloves, and they did not come to play: over and over again, they didn’t hesitate to kill anyone who tried to smuggle out precious cargo. With the Dutch guarding their own supplies carefully, Pierre relied on his own networks. Sailing around to the Philippines, Pierre ran into some guys he knew, who knew other guys, who knew other guys, who eventually knew a guy from China who would sell fresh whole nutmegs to anyone brave enough to carry them out. Pierre bought 300 of the precious nutmegs, and managed to get nearly 50 of them to sprout. Nevertheless, bureaucratic red tape, missed connections and poor gardening by his colleagues meant that in 1753, Pierre Poivre finally sailed into Mauritius with five nutmeg saplings. But by god, they were five nutmeg saplings!
 
By 1766, the broke French government dissolved the French East India Company and began managing the national spice industry directly. Pierre Poivre was a man who knew his stuff, so they assigned him to oversee the islands of France and Bourbon. During his management of the islands, he sent endless expeditions around the world in search of rare plants, which he planted in a spectacular garden which is still thriving today. During his term, Poivre cultivated cloves, peppers, cinnamon, allspice, almonds and of course, his precious nutmegs. He trained young men on the islands to care for all kinds of rare and exotic plants, even those which weren’t well understood. Unfortunately, almonds and cloves weren’t the only expensive imports Poivre oversaw. 
 
When France acquired the islands of France and Bourbon, the two landmasses had no indigenous populations. This made administration fairly easy at first – but the island lacked enough of a labor force to do any serious growing, so 17th century France used its favorite shortcut: slavery. It was only a short distance from the African mainland to the tiny islands, and thousands of men, women and children made the journey over the next 200 years. While Poivre was relatively enlightened for his time, personally arguing against the slave trade and introducing legislation to improve living conditions for the enslaved people under his jurisdiction, let’s not kid ourselves: Poivre’s goal as governor was to grow the enslaved population on the island. Poivre viewed enslaved people the way France viewed spices: it would be better and more affordable to produce your own supply than import them from somewhere else. He promoted programs to encourage enslaved men and women to form families and bear lots of children. The plan worked, and the population of Bourbon ballooned. Enslaved men, women and children on Bourbon performed a wide variety of jobs, from simple cleaning to highly specialized farming. They were considered especially skilled at taking care of the island’s precious plants. 
 
When a ship pulled into port in 1822 carrying a large number of vanilla plants, the samples had a prestigious geneology. Tracing their way back to Paris, and then across the Channel, these plants were cut from the same extraordinary vanilla orchid which had bloomed in a British greenhouse. For two decades, the most educated, privileged minds of Europe had been tending to this vanilla plant – and for two decades, they had failed to make it yield diddly squat. For the next two decades, the white planters of Bourbon kept up this tradition, yielding diddly squat, but colonially. So it was no small surprise when a young enslaved boy named Edmund took his owner by the hand to show him a secret: Edmund had figured out how to make the vanilla plants grow into luscious, lucrative beans.
 
In the town of Saint Suzanne, Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont’s sprawling plantation, Belle-Vue grew an assortment of tropical crops, mostly tended by dozens of enslaved men, women and children. One of those children, Edmund, was relatively new to the farm. The son of Pamphile and Mélise, parents whom he never met, Edmund’s original owner was Ferréol’s sister. When he was old enough to start working, Edmund’s owner sold him to her brother, and he began working on Belle-Vue, where he spent most of his time serving his new master and mistress in the main house. Edmund quickly became one of his master’s favorites, and the pair began taking morning walks around the plantation, where Edmund would pick up plant knowledge from those who were working in the fields. The plantation was a successful one, but there was one plant that simply failed, time and time again. As Bellier-Beaumont wrote, “Of one-hundred vanilla vines on our island, we would be lucky to see ten flowers, and even fewer fruits, in a whole year.” Without the right orchid bees, flowers simply withered into nothing. 
 
So it was quite a shock when Ferréol and Edmund took their morning walk and came across a vanilla vine which wasn’t only blossoming – it was growing a pod! After Ferréol wondered out loud what on earth could have nudged this vine into producing fruit, Edmund replied, “Me!” Considering Edmund worked indoors, had no formal education and was all of 12 years old – not to mention racial attitudes about the intelligence of enslaved people – Ferréol understandably rolled his eyes and continued on his walk. Then, a few days later, on another morning walk, the pair came across another pod! This was beyond coincidence. This was a miracle! Turning to Edmond for an explanation, the young man bent down and pulled out a small stick. Taking careful hold of another blossom on the vanilla vine, Edmond used the stick to nudge aside a tiny membrane. This membrane is called the rostellum, and, well, I’m just going to say it: it’s essentially a condom – a very thin surface that separates the pollen from the ovaries. In Mexico, those tiny little orchid bees would shimmy their way past the rostellum, bringing along a bunch of pollen for the ride. Edmond used his tiny stick to simply nudge the rostellum out of the way and press the two parts together. It was a simple operation, but a very delicate one, and Edmond was suddenly the biggest show in all of Bourbon. Ferréol immediately reached out to other plantation owners, who crowded around to watch “Edmond’s gesture” as it was soon called. They knew, as they watched the young boy perform his so-called “orchid marriage” over and over again, that they would soon be very, very rich. Unfortunately, this cannot be said for Edmond himself. 
 
In 1848, France sent two important pieces of information to its distant colony: First, the island had a new name – instead of Bourbon, the island would now be called Réunion. Second, oh yeah, we abolished slavery. Over sixty percent of Bourbon – excuse me, Réunion – was enslaved, and white planters worried about an uprising – or at least a failed harvest. So instead of notifying the enslaved people of Réunion that they were free, the governor and his allies simply decided….not to. They knew they couldn’t keep up the charade forever, but they simply decided to continue slavery until December – six months after receiving the news, eight months after slavery ended. Ferréol considered Edmond his favorite, and freed him well ahead of the fake deadline, but he didn’t have any particular cash on hand to set him on his way. On December 20th, after Réunion successfully exported fifty kilograms of vanilla pods to France, the governor announced, “My friends, by decree of the French Republic, you are free. All men are equal under the law, and you have no one around you but brothers. Liberty, you will understand, brings its own obligations, one of which is work and respect for law and order.” But the governor and the white planting aristocracy of Réunion weren’t interested in setting up their brothers with work. Edmond, along with thousands of other newly freed men and women, left the plantations for the city in search of paying jobs. There weren’t any jobs to go around, and after years of destitution, Edmond spent time in jail for theft. Ferréol himself recognized that he’d been set up to fail, and wrote to the governor asking for mercy and help. “Edmond…is just one of many slaves in our country who was thrust into the wide world without proper preparation…If anyone has a right to clemency and to recognition for his achievements, then it is Edmond. It is entirely due to him that this country owes a new branch of industry – for it is he who first discovered how to manually fertilize the vanilla plant.” The letter worked, and Edmond was released halfway through his sentence, returning to Ferréol’s farm to work – for pay – as his secretary. Yet after Ferréol’s death, nobody was left to vouch for Edmond, and he died in poverty in 1860, at the age of only 51.
 
Edmond’s gesture transformed the world’s vanilla supply forever. The growers on Bourbon began growing as much fruit as they could, and set about figuring out how to transform the fresh beans into the flavorful dried pods which fetched such high prices at the market. Processing fresh vanilla beans takes months, during which time it is massaged, daily – sometimes up to 2,000 times before it goes to market. Despite the lengthy process, within a few decades, Bourbon outstripped Mexico’s limited supply to become the world’s largest supplier of vanilla, exporting two hundred tons of dried vanilla by the end of the 19th century. The good fortune didn’t stop there – Bourbon planters shared their secrets with their neighbors on Mauritius and, fatefully, Madagascar. Madagascar proved to offer almost perfect growing conditions, similar to those of the forest in Veracruz, and Madagascar now produces 80% of the world’s vanilla. Taken together, France’s colonial outposts produced 80% of the world’s vanilla by the beginning of the 20th century, and the size of that supply grew from that first harvest’s mere 50 kilograms all the way to a staggering 30 tons. Growing supply only stoked a growing demand even further, and Europeans and Americans went vanilla wild. Europeans incorporated vanilla into their luxury perfumes, including Chanel No. 5, while Americans used the beans for their national obsession: vanilla ice cream. The French invented the dessert, and the very first American to fall in love with the treat was Thomas Jefferson, during a diplomatic visit in the 1780s. (In case you’re wondering, “French vanilla” just means the ice cream contains egg yolks, which may be a nod to the recipe used by Thomas Jefferson’s French butler.) Industrial food production, combined with the massive new supply of vanilla beans, meant everyone could now enjoy this previously rare indulgence. And boy, did they. Americans couldn’t get enough! By the 1920s, new immigrants passing through Ellis Island were handed servings of vanilla ice cream as part of their symbolic first meal. That wasn’t the only iconic American treat which relied on the French export. I don’t want to get sued, but it’s strongly suspected that the world’s biggest vanilla buyer is a certain soft drink company. This company balked at the rising cost of vanilla, and tried to reformulate their most famous soft drink without vanilla, only to experience one of the most famous flops in commercial history. But hey, I’m not naming any names here. Finally, vanilla is found in its most traditional form: mixed with cacao beans, corn products, and something sweet, though I doubt Montezuma would find anything recognizable about a Mars bar.
 
Despite the massive scale of the vanilla industry, most of the world’s supply is still grown by small-scale farmers. They sell their beans to intermediaries, who manage the drying and curing, and then those intermediaries sell it to their own brokers, who sell it to big corporations. Unfortunately, all those middlemen make for a pretty corrupt industry, and it can be hard for farmers to realize the profits from their beans. As any home bakers listening already know, deforestation and cyclones have reduced the world’s vanilla supply dramatically, and vanilla prices have skyrocketed ever since – but as with any gold rush, opportunists mushroomed their way into the process. Life as a vanilla farmer is tough, and often dangerous. Right now, it’s a boom time – but supply chain issues during Covid may mean the market gets flooded with vanilla, which is nice for grocery shoppers and bad news for growers. Not to put too nice a point on it, vanilla was originally grown wild, harvested by small farmers, and then snatched up by distant emperors, from Montezuma to Philip II. Then, vanilla was grown, harvested, and cured by enslaved workers, for the enrichment of their plantation owners. Now, enormous corporations and middlemen make most of the profits from the world’s second most expensive spice, only a fraction of which trickles down to the farmers who grow it. Today, two thousand tons of vanilla beans are produced in a good year’s harvest. Edward’s gesture is used to pollinate every single plant.
 
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Thanks for listening to The Land of Desire. Please remember to submit questions for next month’s episode on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or through the contact form on my website. Before we sign off, one last important note: I began working on this episode a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t believe my own timing when I finished the script: last Friday, the United States formally declared a new federal holiday – Juneteenth. I have a lot of international listeners, so for those who aren’t familiar, here’s a history in 4 sentences. Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in the rebellious Confederacy states with his famous Emancipation Proclamation – but enforcement didn’t begin until the rebel armies were defeated. Even after the Confederate Army surrendered on April, the gigantic, geographically isolated state of Texas held out the fight until June. It wasn’t until June 19th, 1865, that the Union Army arrived on the island of Galveston, Texas and announced: “All slaves are free.” African-Americans began celebrating Juneteenth from its very first anniversary, and have been urging its recognition as a national day of observance for decades. As of last Friday, it is now a federal holiday at last. Juneteenth doesn’t just mark the end of slavery – it pays tribute to the enslaved men, women and children in Texas who continued toiling between April and June without realizing they were legally free. On the island of Bourbon, that excruciating period lasted over twice as long. This episode is dedicated to Edmond, and the men, women and children of Bourbon whose ingenuity, intelligence and labor produced the vanilla we enjoy today.

Sources:

  • Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid, Tim Ecott.
  • When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History, Matthew Restall.
  • Jean Gabriel Fouché, Laurent Jouve. Vanilla planifolia: history, botany and culture in Reunion island. Agronomie, EDP Sciences, 1999, 19 (8), pp.689-703. hal-00885962
  • Brixius, Dorit. “A Pepper acquiring Nutmeg: Pierre Poivre, The French Spice Quest and the Role of Mediators in Southeast Asia, 1740s to 1770s.” Journal of the Western Society for French History, vol. 43, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0642292.0043.006
  • Brixius, Dorit. “From Ethnobotany to Emancipation: Slaves, Plant Knowledge, and Gardens on Eighteenth-Century Isle de France.” History of Science, vol. 58, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 51–75, doi:10.1177/0073275319835431.
  • Maverick, Lewis A. “Pierre Poivre: Eighteenth Century Explorer of Southeast Asia.” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 10, no. 2, 1941, pp. 165–177. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3633634. Accessed 23 June 2021.

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