Vanilla Is the Second Most Expensive Spice, and a Word for Ordinary

Vanilla comes from the cured pods of a climbing orchid. It is labour-intensive because the flower's natural pollinator lives only in Mexico: in 1841, on Réunion, a young enslaved boy named Edmond Albius worked out how to pollinate it by hand, and that method is still used on every commercial vanilla flower today. English also uses vanilla to mean plain or standard, which is unfair to a spice this expensive.

• A flavouring from orchid pods. *Vanilla ice cream.*
• Plain or standard. *A vanilla installation.*
• Vanilla extract — the liquid flavouring. *A teaspoon of vanilla extract.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• Split the pod and scrape out the seeds.Cooking.
• Most vanilla flavouring is synthetic vanillin.Made from wood pulp or petrochemicals.
• We used a vanilla setup.Standard, unmodified.

Vanilla facts

• Orchid — the only orchid grown as a food crop
• Hand pollination — required outside Mexico, done within hours of opening
• Curing — months of sweating and drying develop the flavour
• Vanillin — the main flavour compound, usually made synthetically
• Price — among the most expensive spices, second to saffron

From Spanish *vainilla*, little pod, a diminutive of *vaina*, a sheath, from Latin *vagina*, a scabbard. The Spanish name described the shape of the cured pods.