Duck with vanilla

Preparation info
  • Serves

    4

    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in
Winter Food

By Jill Norman

Published 2005

  • About

I ate this dish on the island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean. It was here that the French planted vanilla at the beginning of the 19th century, but the plants were sterile, until a young slave, Edmond Albius, found a way to fertilise the flowers by hand. Since then, vanilla vines all over the world have been fertilised in the same way.