Vanilla

A vanilla bean is the long, thin, dark brown pod that comes from a vanilla orchid one of the only orchid species that produces an edible fruit. Each pod is about 6-8 inches long and looks a bit like a wrinkled, skinny green bean before it’s cured and dried, at which point it turns dark brown to almost black and develops a soft, slightly oily, leathery texture.

Inside the pod are thousands of tiny black seeds suspended in a sticky, fragrant paste this is where most of the signature vanilla flavor and aroma comes from. When you split a vanilla bean open and scrape out the seeds, you get that classic sweet, warm, slightly floral scent used in baking, ice cream, and perfumes.

Vanilla beans are labor-intensive to produce the orchid flowers have to be hand-pollinated (they only bloom for a single day each year), and the pods take months to cure and dry properly after harvest which is part of why real vanilla beans are one of the more expensive spices in the world, second only to saffron.