Growth Requirements and Applications for Vanilla

In recent years, vanilla flavors have become very popular, whether in ice cream, cookies or beverages. Vanilla flavor can occupy a place among a variety of food flavors, it must have its unique features. However, I don't know if you have this question, although vanilla flavor is so common, but few people have seen how does the vanilla look like, and few people have smelled or tasted the original taste of vanilla. So, where is vanilla, we usually eat vanilla flavored food, is it real vanilla, or is it just a food additive, like the other flavors?

In the 18th century, vanilla grew only in the tropical rainforests of southern Mexico through Honduras to Costa Rica and was a valuable perennial tropical vine spice crop. It was not until the 1960s that vanilla was introduced to China, and today it is mainly grown in the area of Hainan.

The reason that why vanilla was able to hide in Mexico until the 18th century is that vanilla is very picky about the environment. The year-round day and night temperatures must not fall below 20°C, while at the same time requiring daytime temperatures to reach 30°C, and the humidity in the environment must not fall below 70%.

Even in the comfortable local growing environment of Mexico, vanilla pods need to grow for 3 years before they can bloom. However, to make the herb bloom successfully, meeting the harsh environment is only one of the requirements, another requirement is even more demanding. At that time, the Europeans discovered this amazing plant from Mexico, they became addicted to it and brought the herb back to Europe. However, no matter how much the Europeans cultivated the herb, they could not get the vanilla to bloom. It was discovered that a special local Mexican bee was the only animal that could pollinate the herb, and this was another condition that allowed the herb to bloom. After discovering the secret of bee pollination, European botanists began to hand-pollinate herbs to make them bloom, but the efficiency of hand-pollination was very low.

Although the vanilla is successfully grown, it does not mean that its strong aroma can be smelled. The fresh green pods on vanilla do not have its characteristic aroma, but need to go through 4 stages of process like fermentation and drying to produce a series of enzymatic and non-enzymatic reactions to finally produce the fascinating aroma.

After the necessary process, vanilla can produce more than 250 kinds of volatile aromatic ingredients and a variety of organic acids, sugars, resins, cellulose and minerals, etc., forming a special aroma and fragrance, making its fragrance unique and long-lasting.

Among them, vanillin is the main volatile component in vanilla and has a high contribution to the overall aroma of vanilla. As we said before, the vanilla fruit does not have aroma, but after certain process, the volatile component β-D-glycosidewill undergo enzymatic and non-enzymatic reactions, and finally decompose into vanillin, vanillyl alcohol and other volatile components, thus giving the pods a strong and unique aroma.

In addition to producing the strong aromatic material vanillin, many volatile components of vanilla extract have special biological activities, such as antioxidant, anti-aging, etc., so it can be used in the cosmetic industry, the vanilla essential oil can be used as massage oil. It is widely used in commercial applications.

Is the vanillin flavor in food artificially synthesized?

Although vanillin is widely found in dried vanilla beans, it is difficult to grow on a large scale because the cultivation of vanilla is excessively restricted by geographical conditions and the cultivation process requires manual pollination of the flowers, which is labor intensive. People have synthesized vanillin and ethyl vanillin in order to obtain the unique flavor in vanilla.

The chemical structure of vanillin is (4-Hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde, is a white needle-shaped crystals, can be bulk production, currently is one of the most widely used fragrances. Different from vanillin, ethyl vanillin can only be obtained by chemical synthesis. Ethyl vanillin is a highly cost-effective alternative to vanillin.It has a stronger flavor than vanillin, so reducing the amount used can give the same effect as vanillin.The flavor of vanilla jams, cookies, perfumes, tobacco and wine and ice cream, are commonly added synthetic vanillin.

Although synthetic vanillin o a large extent mimics the flavor of natural vanilla, it is not possible to replicate the natural aroma of vanilla perfectly. After all the unique flavor of vanilla is a combination of more than 200 volatile components.

But there is no denying that some fancy ice creams do have real vanilla added to them. If there are black seeds embedded in the ice cream,then it is probably the real vanilla. It only takes a few of these seeds to give off a strong vanilla flavor.