The late Elizabeth David occasionally got a small detail wrong, even though she taught so many people of a certain generation to cook. In her classic book, French Provincial Cooking, she writes that “the vanilla was planted in many of the French colonies, notably the islands of Réunion, Bourbon and Madagascar”. The first two places are, in fact, one and the same, Bourbon being the island’s name before the establishment of the French Republic. Even though Madagascar is today one of the world’s largest producers of vanilla, most experts agree that the finest comes from Réunion.

Mrs David was right, though, to point out that this pod from a tree-climbing orchid (the planiforia variety) was first cultivated in Mexico. Imported in the early 19th century to the gardens of General Lafayette in French Guyana, it soon found its way to the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical gardens in Paris. The captain of the ship, Pierre Henri Philibert, was a Creole from Réunion and he also brought the plant to his native island. However, he was disappointed to find that the aromatic pods failed to fertilise. But, a couple of decades later, a young slave named Edmond Albius accidentally discovered that by rubbing together the flowers of the orchid, which carries both male and female organs, the pods would appear.