This is an English fusion recipe book about the history of the word vanilla. Vanilla comes from the Spanish name for the plant; vainilla (little sheath) – a name derived from the Latin word vagina, which meant sheath or scabbard. The Spanish thought up this name when they conquered the Aztecs in Mexico in the 1520s, as they could not pronounce the Aztec name for the plant, which was Tliloxchitl. They chose the name for the physical resemblance between a vanilla pod and a vagina.