Vanilla is a tropical orchid belonging to the family Orchidaceae and it is mainly used in food, perfumery, and pharmaceutical preparations.
The quality of the bean depends on the volatile constituent's, viz., the vanillin content, the species of the vine used, and the processing conditions adopted. Hence, proper pollination during flowering and curing by exercising utmost care are the important aspects of vanilla cultivation.
There are different methods of curing, and each one is unique and named after the places of its origin like Mexican process and Bourbon process.
Recently, Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore has developed know-how of improved curing process, where the green vanilla beans are cured immediately after harvest and this process takes only 32 days, which otherwise requires minimum of 150-180 days as reported in traditional curing methods.
Vanillin is the most essential component of the 200 and odd such compounds present in vanilla beans. Vanillin as such has not shown any antioxidant properties, it is along with other compounds has got nutraceutical properties and therefore its wide usage.
The medicinal future of vanilla may definitely lie in further research on basic science and clinical studies on the constituents and their mechanism of action (1).
The taste of vanilla was the first to be used in ice cream.
From the vanilla are obtained:
- pods or berries
- extract
- oil
- vanillin
Instead of using vanillin, a product that could turn out to be of synthetic origin, many food producers put in their products the Vanilla extract from berries which is a natural product obtained from the crushing of vanilla berries.
This extract can also be prepared at home, buying the vanilla pods.
The best qualities:
- Bourbon from Madagascar
- Tahiti
Chemical composition
The dispersion of phytochemical data on all Vanilla species that was analysed was determined by the three first principal components which explained 92.4% of the total variation of this study.The first principal component explained around 51.9% of the total variation and was represented by flavonoids in stems. The second explained 23.2% of the total variation and was determined by phenols in leaves and terpenes in stems. The third principal component explained only 17% of the total variation and was determined by flavonoids in leaves and terpenes in leaves (2).
Appetite-enhancing effects of vanilla flavours such as vanillin.
Vanilla flavour is familiar to consumers through foods, cosmetics, household products and some medicines. Vanilla flavouring agents typically contain vanillin or its analogue ethyl vanillin. Our previous study revealed that the inhalation of eugenol, which contains a vanillyl group, has an appetite-enhancing effect, and the inhalation of aroma compounds containing the vanillyl group or its analogues led to increased food intake in mice. Here, we found that vanillin, ethyl vanillin and eugenol showed appetite-enhancing effects, whereas isoeugenol and safrole did not. These results suggest that the appetite-enhancing effects could be attributable to the vanillyl group and could be affected by the position of the double bond in the aliphatic chain. Furthermore, the results of intraperitoneal administration of eugenol and vanillin suggest that their appetite-enhancing effects could occur via stimulation of olfactory receptors (3).
Vanilla studies
References________________________________
(1) Vanilla--its science of cultivation, curing, chemistry, and nutraceutical properties.
Anuradha K, Shyamala BN, Naidu MM.
Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2013;53(12):1250-76. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2011.563879. Review.
(2) Morphological and phytochemical data of Vanilla species in Mexico.
Díaz-Bautista M, Francisco-Ambrosio G, Espinoza-Pérez J, Barrales-Cureño HJ, Reyes C, Herrera-Cabrera BE, Soto-Hernández M.
Data Brief. 2018 Sep 7;20:1730-1738. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2018.08.212. eCollection 2018 Oct
(3) Appetite-enhancing effects of vanilla flavours such as vanillin.
Ogawa K, Tashima A, Sadakata M, Morinaga O.
J Nat Med. 2018 Jun;72(3):798-802. doi: 10.1007/s11418-018-1206-x. Epub 2018 Mar 22.
Vanilla berries 
4-hydroxybenzyl alcohol
