 Playing with your food That's the mark of a maker The KitchenAid stand mixer and attachments And welcome everybody to this British Library food season event vanilla anything but boring My name is Polly Russell and tonight I'm wearing two hats because I'm the curator and founder of the British Library's food season working with Angela Clutton and Melissa Thompson as guest directors The food season is now in its fifth year Six weeks of talks and tastings covering all subjects related to food, which I'm sure all of you know food is the best subject So so far we've had events on food in prisons African diaspora food We have done food in fiction and in upcoming events on Monday We've got the legend who is Ainsley Harriet in conversation with Melissa Thompson We've got on the 18th May Mrs. Beaton and Eliza Acton going head-to-head to decide finally who is the Greatest and we're going to do at the end of the month the deep dive into Sake history and culture and also tastings that those are just three of probably another 14 or 15 events still to come so do check out the food season on the British Library's events pages The food season is sponsored by KitchenAid and we're very grateful to them for that The second hat that I'm wearing is in my role as the head of the Eccles Centre at the British Library Since the Eccles Centre is sponsoring this event tonight The Eccles Centre was set up to encourage scholarship and learning about the Americas using the British Library's incredible collections We do a number of activities Including sponsoring fellowships in Katie Sampeck one of our fantastic speakers tonight is an Eccles full bright scholar Who has just completed her research at the British Library exploring chocolate and the subject of tonight's talk vanilla So we're very grateful to full right for being brilliant partners and for supporting our work at the British Library in the Eccles Centre So on to today's fantastic event a chance to find out about the vanilla And I suspect that lots of people and I include myself in this do not know very much about vanilla at all And so tonight we have this fantastic panel of experts cultural food historians to help us plug that are this gap in our understanding We have the aforementioned Katie Sampeck. I am really sorry to say that Katie is no longer based in the UK, which is why we're not doing this event live She was with us for six months at the British Library as a full bright scholar, but she is full time a professor in anthropology at Illinois State University Her research in the UK focused on chocolate and vanilla, as I said, and the relation between them and she'll tell us more but she made the most excellent use of the British Library's historic collections, but she also as far as I could tell Really immersed herself in chocolate and vanilla culture here and stories and marketing and production and I know that in part because every time I used to go back to my desk or quite often there would be a delicious parcel of interesting exploratory chocolate for me to eat Rebecca Earle, our other panelist is a historian based at the University of Warwick. She's interested in everyday culture and is among other things an expert on food cookery books and Latin America She's written on numerous food related topics, including her most recent book, which is on the history of the potato I highly recommend that you seek out Rebecca's website, although do not do it if you don't have quite a lot of time because it is completely tantalizing, you will go down a wonderful rabbit hole because there is so much fascinating information beautifully presented on that website Sue Quinn is our excellent chair. She's a published food journalist and a cookery writer with 14 books to her name. She's the author of a book on Cocoa, so sort of in the vanilla ballpark and I know it very interested to explore more about it She's currently working on a biography of the British cookery writer and author, cookery writer and author Florence White and she is a fantastic chair so we are in wonderful hands She's going to chair, but there will be plenty of time for questions at the end so please add your questions into the bottom of your screen and we hope that we'll be able to get to them But for now over to Sue and our fantastic panelists Thank you so much Polly and I really am excited to be part of this event because vanilla is one of my favorite ingredients, it's fragrant, it's delicious and it's intriguing and like Polly it's one that I embarrassed to say I don't know enough about so I'm sure our panelists will help unpack the history of vanilla for us So Katie, can I start with you and could you take us right back to the beginning and talk about what we know about vanilla, where it originated, how Indigenous peoples used it and the links between chocolate and vanilla, including drawing all your research at the British Library Absolutely, thank you so much Sue Yes, and so my training is as an archaeologist so I have a lot of, my work at the British Library was bringing together that archaeological information on the ground and then the different document resources that helped me put together this really fascinating history And what we see with pre-Columbian examples across Mexico and Central America is that vanilla appears in different sorts of settings, different cultural groups across Mesoamerica made use of it And there are wild species but there are multiple cultivated species, domesticated species that people were using their archaeological traces on ceramics, the residue of vanilla that people have been able to test for And we find it a curb on its own and then also in combination with chemical markers for things like cacao And so all of this shows that there's this presence and interest and use of vanilla that's quite ancient, thousands, at least three or four thousand years old, and really seems to grow in concert with cacao, the tropical tree that we use the seed to make chocolate And then quite literally we know from archaeological evidence and this pre-Columbian evidence that they were intertwined, their histories literally intertwined and that you have vanilla vines that grow and twined around cacao trees and that the orchards for producing the cacao also had vanilla with it And did they use cacao and vanilla in the same products, in the same foodstuffs and drinks? Yes it seems to be that in some cases you see cacao and vanilla used together and certainly the very early colonial dictionaries and other sources, documentary sources refer to the two substances in the same paired, paired together, they're always vanilla is paired with cacao or paired with chocolate And then in other cases, archaeologically and in native language documents there are medical incantations, other sorts of descriptions that are vanilla as a standalone item And you see vanilla often paired with as a flavoring added as for its scent to items like tobacco, to sort of flavor tobacco And then also to a native indigenous drink that was made with a bark of a tree and honey, so a kind of mead and that was often flavored with vanilla And then even medicinal bone tubes that have traces of vanilla so it might have been taken as a kind of medicine Did it have the same type of mystical, cacao had a kind of a mystical, very important place in ancient cultures, did vanilla have that same type of cachet? I think so, I think it's part of the same sort of religious practices, flowers and aroma were incredibly potent parts of spiritual practice And vanilla was certainly part of that mix, it wasn't the only one, but there are some, one of the first descriptions that refers to vanilla is of a kind of amulet to protect a traveler And it's several very fragrant flowers including the vanilla flower as part of that, that a traveler would mix together and wear on their neck to protect them Rebecca, what were the earliest European encounters with vanilla, and when did it first become appreciated or imported to Europe? So yeah, so Katie was just explaining, vanilla is from Mexico, from Central America, it's from a part of the world that was completely unknown to people elsewhere So all of the foodstuffs including vanilla that originated in that area were utterly new to people from the rest of the world So the people from Africa, the Spaniards and Portuguese and other Europeans who arrived in the early 1500s with the Spanish invasion of the Caribbean and Mexico They were encountering all these unfamiliar foodstuffs and they encountered vanilla And to me I would say what they noticed vanilla as was as a flavouring for chocolate So that's what they really commented on and they saw it as something that was added to the chocolate drink to this cacao beverage which they found completely fascinating And it's also worth noting is really the Europeans first encounter with a caffeine like substance So Europeans were quite interested in chocolate which after an initial kind of somewhat leery reaction was enthusiastically embraced by settlers And they embraced vanilla along with it. So some of the earliest descriptions from Spanish sources that we have say things like that chocolate is a drink which they consider medicinal and they flavour it with vanilla That it's a herb that they add to the chocolate drink in order to make this healthful medicinal and pleasant beverage that has a distinctive flavour So the first examples that we have really come from Europeans in the Americas but it pretty quickly travelled back to Europe with chocolate And it made its way to Europe with chocolate did it or did it travel there as a solo ingredient in its own right Well I would say that it travelled with chocolate and so we have lots of descriptions about a vanilla. Katie can come on to this in a bit because it didn't travel uniquely You know it sometimes managed to break free from chocolate we can talk about that perhaps later But many of the early descriptions present vanilla as a flavouring for chocolate So there are descriptions for example from the 18th century from English newspapers describing a royal present that the king of Spain had allegedly given to the Duke of Tuscany And this included in the gift 50,000 weight of chocolate with 300 weight of vanilla to perfume it Or the adverts from people from merchants selling products there's one from the Dublin courier from the mid 18th century saying just imported some fine fresh vanilla for the use in chocolate But it was very often linked with chocolate as a flavouring Katie you touched on earlier that the importance of the aroma the fragrance of vanilla can you speak a little bit more about that I was interested to see a research report from I think it was partly done by Oxford University recently saying that vanilla is the world's most delicious sense As people in the world find the sense of vanilla their favourite of all of all sense. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of the fragrance of vanilla and it's in its story. This is a very early image this codex body honest is the very first image of vanilla that we have in European sources. And it's basically the second second plant from to the right. It's tangled up with the other plants and those are all different flowers so it's it's in this floral categories the kind of pungent floral category and then the next image actually is an example of a small vials Essence box from 16 I think it's 1612 that has essence of vanilla so people were very in these the earliest accounts of vanilla talk about European accounts talk about making extract making drops that people could use as a kind of medicine and to perfume their clothes And that Europeans the Spanish and British sources tend to put it in the same category also as musk and so it's this pungent very and musk and ambergris were seen also as medicinal medicinal substances so that smell was doing something for you And it carries through and the commercial uses today about 1% of the vanilla that's produced is a species that's only for perfumes it's not it's not to be consumed but it's in cosmetics and in different sorts of perfumes And in general, I see this as a sort of perpetuation of those ancient indigenous foundations where those those sense the, and especially that powerful floral exotic beautiful aroma could transform you. That's that's fascinating. And that leads us kind of neatly on to the botany of vanilla which I must confess I really was embarrassingly ignorant of which of you would like to talk about the kind of the botany of vanilla and and the important really crucial part that plays in its story because it was An event that happened that was kind of key to its ability to be commercialized wasn't it. Do you want to take that up Casey. Sure. And so, so one, I'll start it off and then Rebecca can pick up. So the botany of vanilla is is in some ways the science of vanilla is the main way a first way that a lot of particularly British Scientists explorers were very drawn to vanilla. And so you have some very early samples that are collected by Sir Hans Sloan. There were a lot. There's lots that part of my work at the British Library. There are lots of collections of manuscripts and correspondence circulating about what to call it, what its properties are, and how to classify it in the plant world. And that vanilla is a bit like it's it's twin cacao in that it's a very finicky plant. It needs the right conditions of not too much sun, not too much shade, sort of a rich growing environment. It's one of the largest orchid plants in the world. It can grow up to 20 feet tall. And it takes a lot of care for the very tiny orchid flowers to be pollinated properly. There's only a few insects, one specific kind of bee that's best known for naturally pollinating it. It has to be cross pollinated. It can't self pollinate to produce the pod. So for a very long time Europeans were frustrated they would bring the plant back but they couldn't make it produce vanilla pods. And that's why I think you see some vanilla flowers appearing in recipes but not the vanilla pod itself because I think they just weren't, they didn't have as much access to the seed of the plant. So it takes a lot of skill and a lot of care and even though the world of cacao grew and was cultivated in more and more places in the world in parts of South America and other regions beyond its main core in Mexico and Central America, vanilla didn't travel as well with it. And the world of vanilla gradually shrank to a fairly small area in Gulf Coastal Mexico, the Veracruz Coast, that became the main producer for vanilla in the 18th century and into the 19th century because the right kinds of insects weren't around. The ecology for vanilla had really shrunk quite a bit. Rebecca, do you want to pick up on how that changed? Yeah, sure. So actually I thought it might also be useful to just, you know, here's a vanilla pod. I mean you probably all know what they look like but they have a wonderful set. So there are this long pod from an orchid. And so one thing to note is that the science of growing orchids in general, not just vanilla orchids but all sorts of orchids was something that was of great interest to Europeans, particularly in the 19th century. So people were also interested in Britain in learning how to cultivate ornamental orchids and there were all sorts of technical challenges to getting them to grow. So this was one of a number of orchids of interest, I guess you could say, to Europeans. But they were particularly important commercially. Of course, horticultural ornamental orchids had a commercial value too. People paid good money to have a lovely orchid to have in their glasshouse. But orchids had a particular commercial value because of vanilla orchids because of the flavoring. And so in a move that was completely typical of what many European powers did over the 18th and 19th century, the French made deliberate efforts to try to relocate the commercial cultivation of vanilla away from Mexico, Central America, the areas where it originated but which weren't part of the French sphere of influence that weren't part of the French colonial world. And the French deliberately introduced plantation vanilla cultivation into their islands, their colonial possessions in the Indian Ocean, so into Reunion and into Mauritius. So they were very deliberately trying to shift cultivation into areas that Madagascar that they controlled, which is exactly the same process that we saw going on, for example, with tea when the British deliberately introduced tea cultivation into India. So that it was in an area that the British controlled. The French did the same thing with coffee. We saw attempts in the late 19th, early 20th century to relocate rubber cultivation. So vanilla too was the object of deliberate policies to try to move it into a sphere of influence. But the challenge, as Katie was saying, was particularly this question of pollination. And so there were all sorts of experiments with trying to hand pollinate if you didn't have these special bees that you needed. Could you do it by hand? There's some people who tried to experiment. If you do a little bit of research, you'll find the names of somebody called Charles Moren who experimented in the 1830s with this. Not very successfully, it seemed. But interestingly, the story is that the real secret to figuring out how to hand pollinate these delicate flowers was actually discovered by an enslaved boy in Reunion, called Edmund Albios, who in the 1840s apparently figured out how to do this. And this is also a really, this raises a really large historical point that scholars have become increasingly interested in. That the history of science very often records the names of the Europeans, of the Charles Moren's who made advances, but whose advances actually relied on crucial developments and insights from people that we should consider scientists in other parts of the world. So the role of collaboration and out and out appropriation of scientific findings and botanical advances made by non-Europeans is also part of the story of vanilla. And that probably is how we understand how to cultivate vanilla as a commercial crop without the special bees that you need to do the pollination. Would you agree with that, Katie? Is that that kind of writing out of the story of vanilla is a common theme amongst foods like this? Oh, absolutely. And I'm glad that Rebecca made that point because I like to think of Edmund Albios as a botanical genius to have figured this out. And it's exactly the process that's used today. And even though vanilla is one of the most labor-intensive crops in the world, the skill and care and effort that goes into creating that is the hands of people of color, of largely Africans today. And so that's the dynamics of recognizing those contributions and certainly not just to labor but to science and to craft. Am I right in thinking that vanilla plants are still pollinated by hand to a significant extent? Yeah, it's exactly the same process. Exactly. That there's not been any way to figure out a shortcut. And thus the labor-intensiveness of this crop partly explains why the real stuff costs what it does. Absolutely. And why in the 19th century at around the time that France is really gaining this monopoly almost of a great deal of vanilla, natural vanilla production, that you have a whole slew of patents to synthesize vanilla as a flavoring and try to use other kinds of sources, basically a chemistry lab to create something that's far cheaper and more accessible. And we'll definitely come back to that later. But Rebecca, can you talk us through the medicinal benefits or those that were seen by kind of early Europeans or even prior to that? Was vanilla viewed as a medicine? Yeah, so that's something that actually goes back to the connections between the way in which vanilla was seen in Mexico prior to the invasion of Europeans and the way it was seen in Europe. So just the same way that vanilla traveled to Europe also connected to chocolate. And Europeans learned to consume chocolate in an indigenous fashion. They learned to consume chocolate in a way that was influenced by the way in which it was consumed by the Aztecs, for example. This is a point that's been made very beautifully by a scholar called Marcy Norton who's written about this. We can see a sort of similar process of European embracing of Aztec ideas about health because if we look at the sorts of things that Aztec writers apparently said about the health benefits of vanilla, we can see very similar things being repeated by Europeans even hundreds of years later. So if we think, for example, about the sorts of things that Aztec writers said, well, what do they say? They said vanilla is very good for you. It encourages a flow of urine. It warms the stomach. It reduces flatulence. It corrects all kinds of imbalances in your body. And it brings on a late period, which is an interesting thing to note that in the early modern period of an Aztec culture as well, bringing on a late period, which we might describe as inducing a miscarriage, was a perfectly fine thing to talk about. You could say this is a very good herb. It brings on a late period. So vanilla did that. It strengthened the uterus, etc. So you can see that it had a particular link to women. It did particularly healthful things to women, apparently. And if we look at reports from, let's say, 18th century England about what was good about vanilla, people said things like, well, it's a cordial. It's restorative. It unblocks obstructions. It promotes menstruation. It brings on a sweat. It's very healthful. So there's same qualities that it could bring on a late period that it helped balance imbalances in the body, that it helped you pee if you were blocked. All of those same things we see enduring in Europe hundreds of years later. It's fascinating. And I would just add to that a couple of examples too that Maya, so it's not just the Aztecs. There are 16th century Maya texts that talk about vanilla as something that's very stimulating and an aphrodisiac. And they liken it in one medical incantation to charm a scorpion. They liken the pod to the stinger of a scorpion, and it seemed to be sort of potent and almost burning in that way. There were strong associations between women and chocolate or chocolate and women. Do those same links exist in the history of vanilla in terms of those who were responsible for preparing vanilla or perhaps harvesting vanilla? Is it a similar thread? So for the producers of vanilla, it's often presented as a kind of bomb or something soothing. And again, like Rebecca noted, that element is carried through into European approaches. And that it's used in medicines in the 18th and 19th century to flavor pretty strong tasting medicines that have quinine or cod liver oil and put vanilla in it, and it specifically mentions, this is an article in The Lancet, that women and children will take the medicine regularly without hesitation. And that the British Library owns an important little pamphlet, one of the first ones about vanilla by John Peachy from 1694. And it talks about how that the tincture or extract has, it cheers the heart, refines the blood, clears the brain, disperses melancholy winds, and he prescribed it in substances like whey or spa waters or beer, and it's specifically for women who are having reproductive problems and that it would help with fertility and help with menstruation. Really interesting. So such a fascinating and highly prized ingredient, how is it that we've come in modern society come to refer to vanilla as bland? People will describe an uninteresting color of paint as vanilla or it's used to denote something not interesting. How has that happened? Can I come in on that a little bit? Of course you can, Rebecca. So one of the things that's really interesting is what happened to vanilla when it broke free of chocolate, in a sense. So what's that process that allowed, that led to vanilla becoming its own flavor in its own right, not just a flavoring for chocolate. And so we can try to trace that out a little bit. And if we look in British examples, for instance, you see that vanilla started to be used as a flavoring in its own right. Really not. I would say until the late 18th, early 19th century, I mean to be general about this, and it appeared in things like creams, in custards. It was something that was being used in creams, custards, even into the 19th century. If you look at Mrs. Beaton, for example, you can see what does she have to say about vanilla. She says, well, it's in daily use in ices, in chocolates, which we'd expect, in flavoring confectionery. And she sees it as a flavor, a bit like lemon or cinnamon or nutmeg that you can start to add to other ingredients. Whichever flavoring ingredient you like, she writes, you can add vanilla or you can add some lemon to your custard. But it doesn't really make its way into baked goods at the same time. So I started getting interested in thinking about this talk. When did we start adding vanilla to baked goods in particular? So this is a very roundabout answer to your questions. As quickly as I can. But it makes its way relatively slowly into baked goods in Britain. So I mean, I did a little bit of kind of counting. Even in the 1970s, if you look at Delia Smith's book of cakes, one of Delia's earliest cookbooks, something like 6% of her cakes contain vanilla. I mean, most of the cakes don't contain vanilla. But if you look at cookbooks from the US from roughly the same period, every cake contains vanilla, regardless of what type of cake it is. And I think something like, you know, three quarters of the cakes in one of the classic cake book books, one called the Cake Bible from the same years from the US. Everything has vanilla in it. So by the 20th century, and here comes my roundabout answer, I think to your question, in the US, vanilla had become an absolute background ingredient for baked goods. It was like flour and butter and sugar. It was something you added to cake. You know, whatever else you were doing with that cake. You would add vanilla. And so I think it then became this backdrop that that was therefore the equivalent of, you know, it's practically nothing. It was like the foundation layer of paint on your wall. So just to finish that, so I thought I might make a little example of this. So I looked in a typical community cookbook, one of these cookbooks that is put together by groups of people raising money for something. Here's one from a church in Princeton, New Jersey. So I looked at their recipe for what they call plain cake. You won't be able to see this, but here is their plain cake recipe. Plain. What is it flavored with? Vanilla. I mean, I thought, you know, here it is, a plain cake. It's a vanilla flavored cake. But so I think that's sort of the answer to how it became nothing because it wasn't its own flavor. It was something you added and then you put in the real flavors. If you don't have, you just have vanilla. It's a plain cake. Amazing. I'm just going to take this opportunity to remind all everyone who's watching to send in some questions because we'll be going to some questions in 10 minutes or so. So please send them in. That's fascinating, Rebecca. I wonder why why did that happen in the U.S. and not here, though, that was that related to the accessibility of vanilla to in the U.S. Katie, do you have us? Well, I think there's a whole vanilla geography and Rebecca's outline, you know, staked out part of it. But you have to also add into this the French and Italians because each region is using vanilla in a little bit different way with a little bit different connotations. And so the French, I think of as the most enthusiastic vanilla population and they have the there's there are some prepper some pastries. So basically the cannellé is a sort of a small looks almost like a bundt cake, a very tiny one. And a guild of four cannellé makers was established in Bordeaux in 1663 and that's flavored with vanilla traditionally flavored with vanilla and rum. And then in and you also have vanilla added as a standalone flavor for ice cream very early on in France. So there's mid 1700s, a few different cookbooks and sources that say that you should have vanilla or you can combine vanilla and cinnamon. And then the Italians have take an even different sort of approach and that they this is the 1910 Manuale di Cucina has a vanilla sauce that is part of the recipes, or you can use vanilla or cinnamon flavor to some other sauces and frittata pasta can be vanilla flavored and even a chestnut soup. So you have some savory uses for in Italy. And then I think the other geographic region where we should consider at this point too is Asia. And so you have especially in Southeast Asia a use of vanilla and savory cooking. And so studies of people's taste associations with vanilla very culturally. So especially I have to admit I came into my research at the British Library with a United States vanilla bias thinking, oh, I'm going to find it in all these sort of blandish food, simple cakes and puddings and so forth. And it'll be everywhere. And that's really not true in the British context. And if vanilla, but it still is added as Rebecca said to creams and in custards and things like that. If vanilla is added to something, people who are from United States, Europe will taste that item as being sweeter than it is. The same experiment of adding vanilla to a substance in Southeast Asia and Asia. Those people will identify that substance is being salty and more flavorful, more of an umami taste to it. And they don't associate it with sweet. That's fascinating. Is that I understand or correct me if I'm wrong that vanilla does have a very complex flavor profile. It's lots and lots of aroma, aroma compounds in vanilla in a similar way to chocolate or cacao. Why do you think it is that that different, different cultures taste vanilla differently? Well, I think that vanilla really is a very unusual substance. I think the closest culinary parallel is actually salt and that people add salt to bring out flavors in cooking. And vanilla has that same sort of transformative ability. It changes the mouth feel, so how silky something tastes in your mouth. It increases or changes, alters a bit the perception of acidity. It's not as sharp, but still present. And also, like I said, sweetness versus saltiness. I think it's something that people learn as they grow up and the associations of that sort of pungent scent and then the other flavors that go with it. It's just one of those deeply embedded, culturally learned sort of experiences. Rebecca, how popular is vanilla today? Where's it grown? Are we are we eating? Are we consuming genuine vanilla most of the time? Or are we consuming a kind of a chemical version of it? Well, so I read that it varies from one part of the world to another. And so the artificial vanilla, the cheap vanilla essence that you can buy that isn't with real vanilla is usually contains one of the, I don't know, 50 odd. I think flavor of components that, you know, that this vanilla has. And so that's in this vanilla in that one flavor component was synthesized artificially in the 1870s by a chemist. And so it became available as a cheaper version for, you know, for 150 years. But I read recently that in the US, something like 90% of the vanilla flavored things are flavored with artificial vanilla and going back to Katie's point about different geographies, the figure for France is 50%. So 50, you know, there's a substantially higher use of true vanilla flavor in France. So it varies the answer to your question of what are we actually consuming. But it's also being introduced to go back to our earlier point about trade and about botany and hand pollination. It's being introduced, for example, in places like Papua New Guinea, where it's also not native at all, which is on top of everything else a challenge because those are those are societies built around tuber cultivation. You mentioned potatoes before something I'm interested in and other tubers such as sweet potatoes are really important in Papua New Guinea, which you don't cultivate by, you know, anything resembling hand pollination of anything, you know, tubers are cultivated underground from seedstock. So it involves a complete reorientation of agricultural practices for the people who are working in these plantations. So it has all kinds of labor implications as well. So I guess I don't know if I've answered both of your questions at all. Absolutely. I mean, and other parts of the world beyond, I mean, I would be fascinated to try vanilla from Papua New Guinea because the chocolate or cacao from Papua New Guinea has a very distinctive kind of flavor profile. Where else in the world is it coming from? Is it originating from its origins or is it coming from other parts of the world? I would add to what Rebecca said. Most of it, about half of the world production right now is coming from Madagascar. And there's a little bit in mainland Africa and Uganda, but and then Indonesia is another major producer right now. And then third on that list, so maybe a sixth of the world production, so is Mexico. And then in Central America, that's, it's very, very minor production. So this, where it used to be one of the main products coming out of that region, it's now really gone down to almost nothing. But your question or your point about how the cacao flavors vary, it's very clear that also different vanilla from different sources have a different flavor profile. So you'll have a different sort of taste experience of Tahitian vanilla or the vanilla from Papua New Guinea versus Mexican vanilla. And that a trend that's developing in the last few years and looking at agricultural sustainability with cacao production is to revive the practice of growing vanilla and cacao together. And then there are two crops that potentially can both complement each other in their ecology and also are added sources of income. And similar sorts of concern and care that has to go into it. So in contrast to Papua New Guinea and completely changing the agricultural system for those places that are already growing cacao, adding vanilla in is not such a steep learning curve. That's really interesting because a lot of things that I've read about vanilla is is in a culinary sense, people always advise to to use true vanilla and to and to avoid the synthetic versions but there is a debate emerging isn't there about whether that's sustainable or not given the huge worldwide demand for vanilla. Can we actually produce can the world actually produce enough vanilla to to supply demand and should we be looking at synthetic versions I'd love your take on on that. Well, my take is that it's going it's almost, it would be very difficult to synthesize the full complexity of vanilla vanilla in a lab. And what you're missing it's it's sort of like trying to synthesize a great Bordeaux in the lab. Because it's those accidents of the the seasons how the grapes are growing that year it's the same those same sorts of climatic effects and the terroir you know the people handling and doing the work and making judgments about when something is right. When the process of curing and fermenting it properly is really a skill and a craft that brings out flavor in these really interesting complex ways that would be hard to reproduce. Rebecca what's what's your what are your thoughts about that. Well, I don't disagree with anything that Katie said at all about the complexities of of real vanilla and they're not comparable at all. So in terms of the sustained I don't know that I have anything to add in terms of sustainability but I want to simply underline the incredibly complex and delightful flavors of vanilla. And the and to remind people also that we can use it in all kinds of other ways other than then in baked goods or in flavorings. Katie mentioned some of the less you know the idea that you might add it to a chestnut soup for example. And I experimented in preparation for this I experimented with making a vanilla liqueur, which I strongly recommend that you all do I can give you the recipe if we have time. It would be fantastic and what what's your favorite vanilla recipe or way to use vanilla Katie. Well, I like to experiment a little bit with with savory food. And so if I'm making a curry add add just a little bit of vanilla or so I have to say I'm very much American in my taste because I add like extra vanilla into all kinds of desserts but but yeah to play with it to play with it and and and that it can it has a lot more potential than we give it credit for. Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting because again, I know that the similar situation exists with cacao and chocolate it's not just a sweet confectionery snack it it it has a much wider variety of culinary uses them than a lot of people realize. It might be good time to go to some to some questions if I can, if I can read some of ones coming in. Sam built in asks what flavorings, for example spices did vanilla replace in culinary recipes from the 19th century onwards and why did I taste change or did vanilla become more accessible than things like saffron. I can say a little bit about that so if you look at so I was mentioning that when vanilla on in English recipes for example when vanilla started to appear as a solo ingredient rather than as a sidekick for for chocolate in the late 18th early 19th century roughly speaking, it was appearing in things like custards and creams so you can look back in previous centuries what were custards and creams being flavored with. So in the 17th century, for example, as a one recipe just to pick in one example for a custard from a 17th century manuscript recipe book in which the woman who's written it says very explicitly she says your spice must be nutmeg and ginger. She's very clear about that that's the sort of thing that you should have in the 18th century you might be more likely to get something like rosewater or possibly mace as a flavor that would be accompanying a custard or some kind of cream. So those were some of the flavors that that eventually were edged out by vanilla and as I said vanilla kind of made its way as part of a suite of other flavors that, you know, Mrs. Beaton said you can use it with cinnamon or nutmeg or lemon or bitter almond or vanilla or any other flavoring ingredient you'd like. So it came along with this whole package of other spices. So I would, and I did a whole lot of excellent, they're big theories among food scholars about why we moved away from certain flavor complexes to other ones. They go in and out of fashion anyway, don't they, especially as their price falls and, you know, become more readily available. I have a question for Katie from Vandia. Could Catherine or Katie please tell us a little bit more about the protective amulet containing vanilla. Was it an ointment or an actual amulet as an object? It was dried flowers basically. Two other dried flowers, I have the whole recipe right here, but they were taken ground into a powder and placed into a small woven holder, kind of tiny basket basically, worn around the neck. The other flowers are also flowers of vines. So it was the, and from a species that's related to the pepper plant, Piper Amalongo. But Guanacaste is kind of ear flower and also barks of a kind of fragrant tree and aromatic resins. So copal incense was another element that was in this amulet that people were in. And was it purely for protective purposes or was it consumed? It was worn, it was not consumed in that case. Lots of other recipes indicate that people are consuming it. But in this case, I think the idea was that you have so many fragrant ingredients that you're wearing, it probably wafted around the person. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Kara asks, and this is to either of you, is there, and she thanks everyone for a fantastic discussion, by the way, is there a historical preparation for vanilla, which has fallen out of favor, which you think we should all be trying again? Well, I definitely want to say vanilla liqueur. Absolutely. It's so simple. All you need is you need like one bottle, like a one 750 ml bottle of the cheapest brandy that you choose to lay your hands on and two vanilla pods. And you just slip the vanilla pod the long way, chop it up in some pieces, put it in your brandy, let it sit for about a fortnight. It'll develop a lovely flavor and then you can sweeten it up to your taste with some sugar syrup, with the syrup that you make with like one cup of sugar, one cup of water boiled, the same thing you'd use in a cocktail. Very delicious, it will look like that. And then when you've done that, then you can make a great cocktail out of it, which is called orchidia or orchid. So you use two parts of your vanilla brandy, one part orange juice, and one part Quintro. Shake it up with ice. It is lovely. Rebecca, does that have any historical reference point or is this just what you've whipped up in your cocktail bar? Well, the vanilla liqueur is that has lots of historical depth. Actually, I think Katie has an image of a vanilla liqueur from, is it 19th century? No, that's 17th century. So that was the image that we showed earlier. Yeah, and I was going to say your recipe sounds very much like several of the medical treatments that's 17th and 18th century that are in the personal papers, household guides, cookery books and that sort of thing. But yes, this sort of liqueur fortified, brandy fortified with delicious vanilla has to be good for you. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. Angela asks, no, I'm sorry, I'm going to go back to Margie. Margie Gibson, does vanilla play an important role in Mexican cooking today? Do the Mayans have any particular uses for it? So I know that Rebecca has pulled some examples from recent Mexican cookery books in 19th century. It shows up a little bit less, I think, in Mexico than a little slightly farther south in Central America. That it's a more common ingredient in sauces and in savory preparations or something that's, I don't know which way to class it because it's sort of borderline. It would be a mix of a kind of corn gruel with some vanilla and a little bit of cacao thrown in there. And that's a celebratory sort of food to have in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras in those regions, for the Maya regions and nearby areas. Rebecca, did you have any? Well, only just to add that as Katie was saying, it's sort of, so I looked at some 18th and 19th century Mexican cookery books. And what was striking was the relative absence of vanilla in those cookery books. It's certainly not being added to cakes or things like that. And it's not even being used very much in chocolate, which is interesting, given its tight association with chocolate in the pre-Columbian period, that the flavorings that most commonly appear in these cookery books. I didn't do a comprehensive troll of all Mexican cookery books from this period. But the typical spice that was appearing in these books that I looked at to go with chocolate was cinnamon, not vanilla. So even in its homeland, in a sense, you could say that by the 19th century vanilla was, you know, wandering around a little bit, trying to figure out its place in the world. So Angela asks, and this is a good follow on from that, if you were competing in MasterChef, what would be the dish you cook to really showcase vanilla? What dish really shines a light on its attributes? I think I would go for something baked. I would go for something actually like the plain cake that I was waving in front of you. Because I think if you, and I would up the amount of vanilla in it substantially from what the recipe says. So I think that those little baked goods that are just butter and sugar and flour and some vanilla actually really showcase its oomph. I grew up eating a kind of Austrian Christmas cookie called a vanilla crescent, which is just almonds and butter and sugar, bit of flour, and you roll them in vanilla sugar. But that vanilla sugar really sings because it's not fighting with a whole lot of other things. Yeah, I agree boost the boost the amount of vanilla that recipes indicate it's never it's never enough. Katie, do you have any ideas on showcasing vanilla? Well, I agree with Rebecca and that example of the cantaloupe, the vanilla really shines through, it's paired with a bit of rum, and I think that helps intensify the enjoyment of the vanilla. What I really personally go for are custards, really nice custards with really delicious vanilla, a kind of a crème brûlée, and some sort of floral complement, maybe a bit of violet or something, or rose water added with that would really bring out the, I think we're coming up with, has there been a winner announced for the Queen Elizabeth's pudding? Not yet, not yet. I think it should definitely include some vanilla in it. One final thing that we need and we've touched on it, but not discussed it in depth as much as we should. When did vanilla become associated with constructions of race, and how did this manifest itself? Well, that really, to be honest, was the center of my project because I was very interested knowing what we've been describing, how cacao and chocolate and vanilla were paired from the very beginnings of anyone's encounter with it. And then the early sorts of ideas about vanilla of it being pungent and spicy and exciting and this aphrodisiac, I really see it connected with the shift in who is doing the labor to produce cacao or chocolate versus vanilla. And then the increasing concern about race and racial categories that emerges in the 18th century and that you start to see a opposition emerge across this time as the kind of racial categories are more crisply defined and sort of set. That chocolate and cacao become associated with darkness and it's almost as though you have to have that compliment, that opposition. So what's going to be opposite to it? And one scholar who's helped me think through this quite a bit is Cord Whitaker, who looks at blackness and whiteness across a medieval period and it's those sort of almost medieval foundations for thinking about racial categories. And chocolate and vanilla fit very neatly into that sort of construction of chocolate being associated with being kind of sinful, associated with enslaved labor. It being kind of compromised in a way because it's associated with being very, very mixed and at the same time you have the ideas and the experience of vanilla being a little bit everywhere and nowhere at once. It's not this pungent aroma but it's not as marked and obvious and distinct as chocolate is and that it's pure. So you have something that's profoundly always mixed and has a kind of mixed essence to it versus something that to be really enjoyed and exist is quite pure. And so vanilla gradually becomes white as chocolate takes on those other qualities and eventually I think it becomes not just a metaphor but a way to experience and sort of understand those contrasting categories. Because vanilla is sort of everywhere and nowhere and it becomes bland as chocolate and race become quite entwined. Amazing, fascinating and I think we could probably talk about this for hours more but I'm afraid we have to wind it up I think. Thank you Rebecca Earle and Katie Sampeck so very much. It's been a fascinating conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much Sue, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. What a fantastic event. Thank you so much to our panel and to Sue for that wonderful chairing. I know that people were fascinated because there were so many questions coming in I moderate the questions and I'm so sorry we just couldn't get to the many questions there were clearly people are fascinated by this subject. Clearly we've got so much to learn. This should not have just been one event that should have been the vanilla series within the food season, because with so many more questions. I've learned a huge amount. The one thing I'm absolutely delighted about is to hear that the orchid cocktail is in fact medicinal. So I shall be having that as a restorative this evening and feeling very good about it. So huge thanks to these fabulous experts sharing their knowledge and to Sue for this really most for steering of this session. Please do check out the British Library food season and book into upcoming events. As I said we've got the legend that is Ainsley Harriet on Monday the 9th. Mrs Beaton Eliza Acton in battle on the 18th on the 19th we've got Alice Waters of shape and ease from America talking about her life in food. There is a huge amount still to come all nutritious all delicious and all fascinating just like tonight so thank you so much for joining us at the food season for the British Library and thank you for bright and the Eccles Center.