Eric T. Jennings Vanilla review, recensie en informatie boek over de geschiedenis van een buitengewone boon. Op 26 augustus 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press het boek over de geschiedenis van vanille, geschreven door Eric T. Jennings, de Canadese historicus. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.
Eric T. Jennings Vanilla review en recensie
- “Eric Jennings is right: Vanilla is no ordinary bean. In this beautifully crafted and brilliantly researched history, Jennings tells the story of how this coveted pod left its home in Mexico to conquer the world, thanks to increasing global demand, imperial connections, and one remarkable enslaved teenager on Réunion Island named Edmond. Vanilla is a tour de force.” (Christopher Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal)
- “The stunning Vanilla sits amidst deep and spectacular digging into ecology, history, power shifts in the old and new worlds. With his distinctive command of the polyvalent archive, Eric Jennings turns our head towards an unexpected, rich history. That of Bean Being. What an impressive achievement!” (Ruby Lal, Emory Professor of South Asian History)
Vanilla
The History of an Extraordinary Bean
- Auteur: Eric T. Jennings (Canada)
- Soort boek: geschiedenisboek
- Taal: Engels
- Uitgave: Yale University Press
- Verschijnt: 26 augustus 2025
- Omvang: 312 pagina’s
- Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
- Prijs: $ 30,00
- Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris
Flaptekst boek over vanille van Eric T. Jennings
The fascinating and wide-ranging history of vanilla, from the sixteenth century to today.
Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywhere. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crème brûlée to Japanese purin. It is the quintessential ice cream flavor in the United States. Eric T. Jennings explains how the world’s only edible orchid, originally endemic to Central America, became embedded in the international culinary and cultural landscape.
In tracing vanilla’s rise, Jennings describes how in the 1840s an enslaved boy named Edmond Albius discovered a way to pollinate vanilla orchids with a toothpick or needle—an ingenious process that is still in use. This method transformed the vanilla sector by enabling the plant to be grown outside of its natural range. Jennings also looks at how the vanilla craze led to the search for now‑pervasive substitutes, and how a vanilla lobby has fought back. He further unravels how vanilla—the world’s most expensive crop and once considered its most refined fragrance—came to mean “bland.”
This tale of botany, production techniques, consumption habits, and colonial rivalry connects the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, revealing how vanilla has become a potent symbol of the modern global village.
Eric T. Jennings was born 26 July 1970 in Canada. He is chair of the History Department and a fellow at Victoria College at the University of Toronto. He is the author of seven previous books, all of which have been translated into French, and one into Vietnamese, and he has held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Toronto, Canada.