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Mayan chocolate, as is still drunk in southern México (Yucatán), Guatemala and Belize, is often spicy, containing chiles and other native (allspice, annatto) or imported (black pepper, cinnamon) spices. Sweeteners (sugar or honey) are possible but in no way mandatory. The drink is enjoyed hot or cold, but in any case it is whipped such that it becomes foamy; the foam is considered the most delicious part.
The Aztecs drank chocolate mostly cold and often used honey to get a sweet product; in our days, of course, cane sugar is more common. Aztec chocolate may contain all aromatics mentioned in the previous paragraph, and more (e.g., paprika or Mexican pepper leaves); for cultic purposes, the deeply red colour brought by addition of annatto was highly esteemed. When Hernán Cortés forced the Aztec ruler Moctezuma to grant him an audience on November 14th, 1519, he was the first European to try chocolate; less than three years later, the great Aztec capital Tenochtitlán had been shattered to pieces, and the Aztec empire had ceased to exist.
Vanilla was first used in Europe mainly for the same purpose as in
America before: To flavour drinking chocolate, a very popular drink
among the 17.th century European nobility. European drinking chocolate
was almost exclusively sweet and might use a lot of additional flavourings,
e.g. anise, cinnamon,
but also exotic animal products like musk and ambergris; the main European
contributions to chocolate was, however, the use of milk instead of
water, which culminated much later, at the end of the 19.th century,
in the production of milk chocolate bars.
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| Sterile vanilla branch |
Chocolate aside, vanilla is used for a large number of other sweet dishes in Western cuisine; its usage is salty foods is very uncommon. Vanilla is essential for a large number of cookie recipes, for cakes, sweet continental puddings and gruels, and even for milk-based sweet drinks; moreover, dry pastries (e.g., Strudel in Germany, Austria and Czech Republic) are sometimes served with hot, vanilla-scented sweet sauces. The most important, almost proverbial, application is, however, vanilla ice cream. The largest part of “vanilla-flavoured” industrial products do not contain true vanilla, but the much cheaper synthetic vanillin, the main (but not single) constituent of vanilla aroma.
Vanillin can be easily produced from wood wastes of the paper industry; the same chemical reaction, by the way, lies behind the vanilla aroma of some wines aged in wood barrels (barrique). Pure vanillin does have a scent reminiscent to vanilla, but it lacks the subtle flavour of the true spice. It can, therefore, not substitute vanilla in high-quality products. In no product this is more obvious than in vanilla ice cream, which (apart from rare exceptions) has disappointing flavour. Vanilla ice cream made with natural vanilla extract or vanilla beans (you can recognize this by the tiny black seeds in the ice cream) is comparatively rare, and of course somewhat more expensive.
By the first view, ice cream seems a typical product of industrialized
Western countries, since its production and transport calls for significant
technical facilities. Yet, even Alexander the Great enjoyed iced desserts,
and several Roman emperors are reported to have adopted this custom.
Chinese Emperors of the Tang dynasty had ice-cooled deserts based on
buffalo milk flavoured with camphor to lessen the discomfort of hot
summer days, and similar recipes were later developed by the Indian
Mughal dynasty (kulfi). Cooling was achieved by snow
transported to court from distant mountains, which is a considerable logistic
success.
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| Vanilla flower and ripening fruits |
Ice creams produced today owe their smooth and fluffy texture not only to various emulgators, but also to tiny gas bubbles trapped in the semisolid matrix. This feature distinguishes the soft ice of our days from the half-frozen sherbets of Nero or Jehan Gir.
Ice creams are produced in a huge variety of different flavours; most popular in Western countries are chocolate, fruit flavours (of the plants mentioned on these pages, lemon, orange, mango and pomegranate), peppermint, vanilla, tonka and a wealth of nuts, e.g., hazelnut, almond or coconut. Less main-stream, but excellent are ice creams produced from aromatic herbs (lemon verbena, lavender) or spices like cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. In some countries, ice creams with floral scent are popular, e.g., rose in Iran or kewra in India; Thailand and Indonesia have ice from pandan leaves to offer. The saffron ice cream sold in Indian tourist centers I found almost addictive (best was saffron-pistachio, for those planning to spend their vacation in Mount Abu/Rajasthan). There are, however, other flavours of ice cream described in the literature which I mention without being able to imagine how they might taste: Reports tell about garlic and chile ice creams, a challenge for the stronghearted!
Different to most other spices, the processing of vanilla is rather complicated, because fresh vanilla pods do not have any taste; the vanillin is bound as a glycoside and must be set free by enzymatic reaction, normally induced by a sequence of blanching (Bourbon) or steaming (México) operations. This, and the need of manual pollination outside México, makes vanilla one of the most expensive spices.
Vanilla is not frequently combined with other spices, although saffron or cinnamon are probably worth trying. Tonka beans or pandanus leaf extract make interesting alternatives for vanilla; another possibility are scented flower distillates (rose, kewra).
Everything expensive gets adulterated and faked – vanilla is no exception. First of all, synthetic vanillin is an obvious choice to “spice up” beans of low quality, or beans that have been extracted to yield the expensive vanilla extract (won by macerating vanilla pods in a mixture of water and alcohol). Synthetic vanillin may also appear in the extract itself. Especially in México, tonka bean extract shows up regularly in vanilla extract. See also tonka bean for vanilla-flavoured cigarettes.
Two related vanilla species
(V. pompona, also called Guadeloupe vanilla or Antilles
vanilla from the West Indies and V. tahitensis from Tahiti),
are sometimes used as adulterations. Both species are considered inferior
to V. planifolia, and indeed their aromas differ markedly
from standard vanilla flavour people are used to. Of course, unusualness
is not necessarily a sign of low value, and the two “exotic vanillas”
might be used in their own right.
