Ingredients · Flavouring

Vanilla

Vanilla planifolia · Orchidaceae (orchid family)

Vanilla
The cured seed pod of an orchid, and the second-most expensive spice in the world after saffron. Twelve products carry it. In a blend vanilla does something no other ingredient does: it makes everything beside it taste rounder and sweeter without adding sugar, which is why it turns up in chocolate, fruit and chai blends alike. The reason it costs what it does is labour — every flower has to be pollinated by hand, and the pods then go through a multi-stage curing process that takes months.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed pod
KindFlavouring
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromMexico (native range), Madagascar (production)
TasteSweet, creamy and floral with a woody depth; it rounds out everything beside it

How to use it

In tea blends as pieces or bits, which release slowly. In chai, chocolate blends, fruit blends and rooibos. It takes heat well and is one of the few flavourings that survives a long steep without turning bitter.

With food

Cream and custard. Chocolate. Coffee. Stone fruit and berries. Caramel. Almond. Rum. Pear. Pumpkin.

With spices

Cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Cloves. Saffron. Lavender. Coffee.

With tea

Rooibos, which it suits better than anything. Black tea. Matcha. Pu-erh. Chai.

Its story

Where it comes from

Native to Mesoamerica. Madagascar dominates production today at roughly 42 per cent of world supply as of 2023, with Indonesia at about 25. Where our lots come from is not stated. Bourbon vanilla is named for Île Bourbon, now Réunion.

What happened

The Totonac people of what is now Veracruz were among the first to domesticate vanilla, cultivating it on farms since at least 1185, and the Aztecs took up the pods to flavour their food and drink. Outside Mesoamerica the plant would grow but would not fruit, because the insect that pollinates it did not live there — and that was the problem for three centuries. It was solved in 1841 by Edmond Albius, a twelve-year-old enslaved child on the French island of Réunion, who worked out how to pollinate the flower by hand. His method is still the one used, and it is what made vanilla a global crop. He was freed when France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848, worked afterwards as a kitchen servant, was convicted of theft and imprisoned, and died in poverty in 1880. The compound that carries most of the flavour, vanillin, is the reason imitation vanilla exists at all.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

Explore

Other ways in

Ingredients Every plant, seed, bark and salt in the shop on one page — what it is, why it is in the blend, and where it comes from. See them all Collections Every shelf in the shop on one page — teas by leaf and flavour, spices by kind and cuisine. Open any shelf to see what is on it. Browse the shelves The Showroom The whole shop on one floor — every tea, spice and blend, filtered by what you are after, with the basket beside you. Open the Showroom Elsewhere Seventeen short trips — a place, a moment, a feeling — each with the teas and spices that get you there. Take a trip