Mondo Knows Facts
Vanilla reached Europe in the sixteenth century
Spanish ships carried cured pods home from Mexico along with chocolate Vanilla is the cured fruit of an orchid native to Mexico and Central America, where the Totonac and later the Aztecs used it to perfume chocolate. Spanish arrivals sent pods back to Europe in the 1520s, and for centuries Mexico remained the main source. Curing takes months of sweating and drying to develop the familiar aroma. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: vanilla, mexico, spice-trade
Vanilla reached Europe in the sixteenth century: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Spanish ships carried cured pods home from Mexico along with chocolate. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a food fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.