Nancy Ross, age l3, of Del Mar, Calif., for her question:

Where do we get vanilla?

Our foods would be just as nourishing without sugary spices or flavorings. but they would be dull. Imagine salads without dressings and gum .minus its minty sweetness. Vanilla is blended with so many common foods that its loss would make our everyday diets seem flat.

The Old World knew nothing of vanilla or chocolate before Columbus sailed westward to find the east Indies. These treats were found in Central America by the Spanish conquistadors. Chocolate and vanilla were gifts of the plant world which the Indians had used for ages. They knew how to coax forth the secret flavors and also that the taste of chocolate was enhanced by the taste of vanilla.

Cortez prized these tasty treasures and loads of chocolate and vanilla were shipped to the Old World as a tribute from the New. The Spanish gave us the word vanilla, meaning a little pod, because the fragrant flavoring is taken from a long pod of beans. The vanilla plant is an orchid vine, an original native of Mexico and other parts of Central America. The plant cannot reseed itself, but in the l800s botanists learned how to pollinate its gorgeous blossoms by hand and the plant was taken to other lands to grow.

Nowadays, most of the world's vanilla is grown in Madagascar and its nearby islands, faraway Tahiti and Hawaii. some still comes from its native Mexico and not far from its original home, the West Indies. The fertilized seeds are placed where they can prod their rootlets into the bark and twine their supple stems around a tree

For three years the vanilla vine twines its long leaves around the borrowed tree  then it is ready to bear. A cluster of maybe 20 yellow gold orchids adorns the glossy foliage and the blossoms are pollinated by skillful experts. The faded flowers are replaced by tiny pods which are left to grow for about eight months. The light green bean pods are then five to l0 inches long and ready for harvesting.

The fresh beans are flavorless. They must be dried and fermented in sweat boxes until they look like dark brown sticks, stiff and dead. The dry beans are sent to market to enhance the flavor of countless foods. some of the harvested beans are cured to yield liquid vanilla extract. They are chopped and strained through water and alcohol. After the first crop, a vine can produce six more yearly harvests of tasty bean pads.

The vanilla vine is choosy about climate and living conditions and its beans refuse to mature without expert help. Its delicious flavor is expensive to produce and genuine vanilla is costly. However, our chemists have used cheaper ingredients to copy the subtle flavor. Most of the vanilla that adds such a boost to our cakes and candies is man made. These artificial brews are almost as good as the genuine and more expensive vanilla beans and vanilla extract.