History of Aztec and vanilla flavor

Vanilla is indigenous to Central America from southeastern Mexico through Guatemala to Panama. The Aztec people, who lived in present-day Mexico, were among the first to use vanilla. They traded for vanilla with other peoples, such as the Totonac, who also lived in Mexico.

In Nahuatl, the Aztec language, vanilla is called tlilxochitl and its seeds collected from wild plants were considered among the most important tributes paid to the Aztec leader.

Vanilla became a favorite of the Aztec nobility. In the royal court it was considered an aphrodisiac. A Franciscan friar, Benrhardino de Saghun, write about Mexican vanilla in the early 16th is quoted as saying that the Aztecs used vanilla seeds in cocoa drinks and as a medicine and sold them in their markets. Meanwhile,

Hernando Cortes, the Spanish conqueror of the Aztecs, became the first European to tats vanilla when he drank chocotatl in Montezuma’s banquet hall.

Although the Spaniards imported vanilla beans to Europe, where they were used to flavor chocolate, which the Spaniards also borrowed from the Aztec, vanilla processing factories were not established in Europe until the late 1700s.
History of Aztec and vanilla flavor

Introduction of vanilla to America

Thomas Jefferson was fond of vanilla and he was credited with introducing and helping popularize vanilla in America.

Before being elected as president in 1800, Jefferson served as minster to France from 1785 to 1789. He certainly would have enjoyed vanilla-scented luxuries while in Europe.

Finding no word of vanilla in United States and he then ordering fifty vanilla pods shipped from France to the United States.

The Library of Congress has preserved an ice cream recipe from Jefferson’s documents.  Jefferson reportedly created this recipe himself and he enjoyed vanilla ice cream at his home in Virginia.

Currently United States of America is the largest importer of vanilla in the world followed by France and West Germany.
Introduction of vanilla to America 

History of vanilla

Vanilla is one of the most exotic, rare, expensive, intense and popular of all flavors and fragrances. The Totonac peoples were the first to use, and later grow, vanilla.

It was agreed nearly all ethnobotanists, anthropologists, and historians agree upon is that, although the vast majority of vanilla beans today are produced in the Island of Madagascar, the plant originally domesticated in southeastern Mexico.

Vanilla was used in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican for a variety of purposes: tribute, cacao flavoring, medicinal, etc., and by numerous indigenous groups such as the Maya, Aztec, and Totonac.

Vanilla beans were first picked from wild vines in the forest when they were ripe and already full of scent. Eventually the Totonac farmed vanilla vines and learned how to cure the beans.

Aztec aristocracy used it mostly as an after-dinner luxury. They never saw for themselves. This due to the plant hidden deep in the tropical forest far from Tenochtitlan, it was known only to the people who lived within its range.

The Aztecs added vanilla to a drink they called chocolatl, which include cacao beans, corn, honey and chili peppers.

Following Spanish colonization of Mexico and Central America, vanilla began a more international journey. Impressed by the taste and flavor of the drink offered by Aztec Indians, Hornando Corte introduces it to Spain. It was a cocoa drink mixed with vanilla.

An early record of vanilla’s various uses as medicine, perfume, and flavor is presented in the Florentine Codex, a series of books written and illustrated under the supervisor of the Spanish Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun between 1540 and 1585. In the books it was mentioned that Aztecs used vanilla in cocoa, sweetened with honey and sold in their markets.

The Spanish named the bean vainilla, which comes from a Spanish word from the ‘sheath’ since the cured pod looks like a miniature sword sheath or cover.

England’s Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, was said to eat and drink only food to which vanilla extract had been added, after he apothecary suggested that the spice could be used for purposes other than flavoring chocolate.

Beginning in the mid- to late eighteenth century, the Totonac of the Papantla region of the state of Veracruz were the first and only vanilla exporters in the world for nearly 100 years.

The Mexican monopoly on vanilla fell apart with the discovery of method for hand pollination of vanilla in Belgium in 1836.

Though it was documented during 16th century, the commercial cultivation started only in the early 19th century.

More than half of the world’s vanilla beans end up in the United States. Half of those are used in the dairy industry, mainly in the form of vanilla extract, or essence.
History of vanilla