multi-flavoured extravaganza of ice creams available now – honey and pickled jalapeño, anyone? – vanilla is still the standard by which I judge ice-cream producers.
If their carton of vanilla is good, then they’ll surely be good at chocolate and strawberry as well. Its pureness makes it seem like the first ice cream, the flavour that lured us all, but for a long time – and before the invention of ice cream – vanilla was used in conjunction with other flavours.
The Aztecs combined it with chocolate and when the conquistadors brought vanilla back from Mexico to Spain it was used in a drink of cocoa, corn and honey.
By the early 1600s, the drink had spread all over Europe, but in 1602 Queen Elizabeth I’s apothecary recommended that vanilla be.
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