Why Do You Love Vanilla? Ask Your Mom

When people ask me what my favourite flavour of ice cream is, I often lie and say cookies and cream.

In my mind it’s the flavour closest to Vanilla, without having to say vanilla.

Because, as you may know, vanilla is considered, well…vanilla.

Not to say cookies and cream is bad, but there is just something refreshing and simple about vanilla.

But maybe it’s not about vanilla’s freshness or simplicity making it universally appreciated.

It might be something deeper.

A conclusion Freud himself would have reached.

And it all goes back to your mom.

Before we get into that, let’s shed some light on vanilla.

Finding Vanilla

It begins as a flower which only opens one day a year.

And if you fail to pollinate that flower, it dies, and no vanilla bean is produced.

This leads to a lot of crying vanilla enthusiasts.

Until the 19th century, the Melipona, a Mexican Bee, was the only insect that could pollinate vanilla orchids.

As demand rose for vanilla, industrialization took over the pollination process.

However, it couldn’t solve this pollination puzzle.

Then a Madagascar slave, Edmond Albius, developed a way to manually pollinate the Vanilla orchid using a silver of wood.

And, believe it or not, this is how Vanilla orchids are painstakingly pollinated today.

The work doesn’t end here.

It could take almost a year before a Vanilla pod is ready for use.

The bean must ripen and darken before it’s harvested.

Then it has to age.

Failure is common at any stage.

Artificial Vanilla: Vanillin

Vanilla became a staple ingredient in kitchens around the world.

The manual pollination process couldn’t meet demand, so the race to develop artificial vanilla flavour started.

Vanillin is the most recognizable flavour from vanilla’s profile.

It only accounts for about 2.5% of vanilla bean pods, which offer 250–500 different flavours and fragrances.

Vanillin is found in wood, which is easy to harvest and cheaper compared to vanilla bean pods.

If you get your hands on vanillin, you’re halfway to making a decent vanilla knockoff.

The rest comes down to mimicking vanilla’s flavour profile.

So if you’re munching on something “vanilla” flavoured, like ice-cream, chances are it’s vanillin.

The Price of Vanilla

Believe it or not chocolate lovers, but vanilla is extremely important to the flavour profile of chocolate.

It’s a proprietary part of most chocolate recipes as it adds creaminess while balancing sweetness and acidity.

But it comes at a steep cost.

To put vanilla’s price evolution into perspective, in the mid-1990s vanilla cost $9 per pound.

With climate change and drought, demand and underpaid farmers, vanilla is now $115 per pound.

Vanilla is produced in only a few regions in the tropics.

The most sought after vanilla is Bourbon Vanilla, which is buttery and fruity, stemming from the French-occupied island of Reunion.

The problem with Vanilla is that it’s everywhere.

It’s one of the most common flavours, and that’s what gives it a bad rep.

But again the vanilla we experience in most products, isn’t vanilla at all.

Vanilla & Your Mom

Now how does this all relate back to your mother?

Charlotte Bruce Harvey’s paper: “Scents & Sensibility,” from Brown University, argues our almost universal love of vanilla is evolutionary.

We love fatty high caloric foods because our caveman brethren gorged on the stuff to survive long winters.

This survival instinct holds a spot in our brain.

As does our affinity for vanilla, which can be traced back to the milk our main caregivers fed us as babies.

For those who were breastfed, your mother’s breast milk was a source for survival throughout your infancy, and scientists have discovered breast milk shares a lot of scents and flavour notes with vanilla.

And perhaps that’s why most of the world can’t get enough vanilla.