When collected to prepare it for the market, about 12,000 of the pods are strung like a garland by their lower end, as near as possible to their foot-stalk; the whole are plunged for an instant into boiling water to blanch them; they are then hung up in the open air and exposed to the sun for a few hours.  By some they are wrapped in woollen cloths to sweat.  Next day they are lightly smeared with oil, by means of a feather or the fingers, and are surrounded with oiled cotton to prevent the valves from opening.  As they become dry, on inverting their upper end they discharge a viscid liquor from it, and they are pressed several times with oiled fingers to promote its flow.  The dried pods, like the berries of pepper, change color under the drying operation, grow brown, wrinkled, soft, and shrink to one-fourth of their original size.  In this state they are touched a second time with oil, but very sparingly, because with too much oil they would lose some of their delicious perfume.

They are then packed for the market in small bundles of 50 or 100 in each, enclosed in lead foil, or tight metallic cases.

There are four local varieties, all differing in price and excellence; viz., the vanilla fina, the zacate, the rezacate, and the vasura.

One pod of vanilla is sufficient to perfume a pound and a half of cacao.  It is with difficulty reduced to fine particles, but it may be sufficiently attenuated by cutting it into small bits, and grinding these along with sugar.

As it comes to us, vanilla is a capsular fruit, of the thickness of a swan’s quill; straight, cylindrical, but somewhat flattened, truncated at the top, thinned off at the ends, glistening, wrinkled, furrowed lengthwise, flexible, from five to ten inches long, and of a reddish brown color.  It contains a pulpy parenchyma, soft, unctuous, very brown, in which are embedded black, brilliant, very small seeds.

The kind most esteemed in France is called leq vanilla; it is about six inches long, from one-fourth to one-third of an inch broad, narrowed at the two ends and curved at the base; somewhat soft and viscid, of a dark reddish color, and of a most delicious flavor, like that of balsam of Peru.  It is called vanilla giorees, when it is covered with efflorescences of benzcoin acid, after having been kept in a dry place, and in vessels not hermetically closed.

The second sort, called vanilla simarona, or bastard, is a little smaller than the preceding, of a less deep brown hue, drier, less aromatic, destitute of efflorescence.  It is said to be the produce of the wild plant, and is brought from St. Domingo.

A third sort, which comes from Brazil, is the vanillon, or large vanilla of the French market; the vanilla pamprona or bova of the Spaniards.  Its length is from five to six inches, its breadth from one-half to three-fourths of an inch.  It is brown, soft, viscid, almost always open, of a strong smell, but less agreeable than the leq.  It is sometimes a little spoiled by an incipient fermentation.  It is cured with sugar, and enclosed in tin plate boxes, which contain from 20 to 60 pods[52].  The average annual import of vanilla into Havre, in the five years ending 1841, was about 16 boxes; in 1842 it was 30 packages.