Today is National Vanilla Ice Cream Day. Vanilla is so frequently used to flavor ice cream in Europe and North America that many people consider it to be the default ice cream flavor. During the Regency era, though, Vanilla was exotic and expensive.

With more than 200 flavor compounds, vanilla is one of the most complex flavors (so much for vanilla being a “plain” flavor). Moreover, it is unique in that it does not cause palate fatigue, ensuring the first vanilla bite tastes as good as the last. Today it is one of the most popular flavors, so popular it has lost much of its mystique, becoming “plain old vanilla.” But that hasn’t always been the case.

The Vanilla Orchid

Vanilla beans come from the only orchid variety (out of 25,000) that creates edible fruit. (Sonde, 2016) The vanilla orchid flowers open only for a few hours one day a year. If pollinated, they produce long green pods, or beans, containing tiny seeds which must remain on the vine from six to nine months to ripen. Afterwards, they are harvested by hand.

Fresh vanilla beans are essentially without taste or aroma. The vanillin within is only released after an extensive process which involves alternately drying and sweating the beans, then conditioning them for about three months. This processing (and the need for hand pollination) makes vanilla the second-most expensive spice in the world. (Saffron is the first.)

The spread of Vanilla

Vanilla (and chocolate) was first discovered, cultivated and prepared by the ancient peoples of Mexico. The Spanish, who conquered those lands in the sixteenth century, were the first Europeans to appreciate vanilla. For many decades thereafter, the Spanish controlled vanilla production and trade. (Kane, July 9, 2018)

Cortés brought vanilla back to Europe as a flavoring for Mexican hot drinking chocolate at Queen Elizabeth I’s court. In 1602 her apothecary, Hugh Morgan, introduce sweets flavored primarily with vanilla on its own. The queen’s fondness for them ensured the spread of vanilla into a wide range of products including perfumes, tobacco and alcohol.

Vanilla was known in Regency England, but it was rare, expensive and seldom-used and would remain so until after the 1841 advance in manual pollination that made it more readily available. By the middle of the nineteenth century, vanilla recipes were common. During the Regency, rose water was a far more common flavor for desserts and other sweets. (Kane, July 9, 2018) So, Jane Austen probably never experienced the joys of vanilla ice cream.

Vanilla came late to English recipe books. Borella’s, Clermont’s and Nutt’s cookbooks from the late 1770’s and early 1800’s contain no mention of vanilla. Emy’s 1768 cookbook featured several recipes for vanilla-flavored iced treats, but food historian Waverley Root, (says) the first known vanilla recipe published in English appears in the 1805 edition of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, which suggested adding “vanelas” to cacao beans prepared for drinking chocolate. Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife (1824) offers the first American recipe for vanilla ice cream (Rupp, 2014). 

Thomas Jefferson  

The lack of published English-language recipes for vanilla treats did not stop Thomas Jefferson from bringing back a recipe for vanilla ice cream acquired on his trip to Paris as Ambassador to France in 1784-1789. Thus, it appears he introduced the United States to vanilla.

Jefferson’s Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe

Take 2 of bottles cream, 6 egg yolks, ½ lb. sugar and a stick of vanilla cook over a fire, strain, pour into a sabotiere and set in a bucket of ice and salt.  After 7 minutes, turn the sabotiere for 10 minutes, open and use a spatula used to loosen ice from the sides. Repeat several times until the ice cream formed, then place in molds and pound down solid.  (Reber, 2014)

Compare this to Emy’s recipe from the same period:

Vanilla Ice Cream

Finely grind a stick of vanilla with sugar until it will pass through a silk cloth.  Four egg whites, beaten stiffly, can optionally be added.  Add to a pint of double cream and add powered sugar.

Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife

Vanilla Cream.

Boil a Vanilla bean in a quart of rich milk, until it has imparted the flavour sufficiently—then take it out, and mix with the milk, eight eggs, yolks and whites beaten well; let it boil a little longer; make it very sweet, for much of the sugar is lost in the operation of freezing.

WHEN ice creams are not put into shapes, they should always be served in glasses with handles. (Randolph, 1824 )

Find references HERE

Read More about Regency Ice Cream Here

Read More about Regency Food and Drink Here