We have had little books in search of cocoa and chocolate, coffee, cinnamon - that's all the Cs, then - as well as nutmeg and assorted other spices. Now is the turn of vanilla. It, like so many others that catch the imagination of the gastronomic traveller, was a New World discovery: ten-a-penny to the Aztecs, Inca and Maya, but gold dust once it reached Europe.

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