What is vanilla essence actually made of?
Vanilla essence is made from the extracts of vanilla beans. The vanilla is a climber belonging to the orchids family. The active ingredient is vanillin which is extracted from the beans with...
What does vanilla taste like?
What does vanilla taste like? The flavor of vanilla is distinctively sweet and perfumed with a hint of smoke which can be compared to caramel while the aroma is warm of wood and honey. Where does vanilla come from? Vanilla is native to Mexico coming from the fruit-bearing orchid named the vanilla plant.
What does vanilla do for a recipe?
- Madagascar Vanilla – very common and has a creamy and rich flavor
- Mexican Vanilla – has a darker, almost smoky flavor
- Tahitian Vanilla – also very common and has a rich floral flavor
What makes pure vanilla extract so special?
When shopping for this ingredient, the first thing you should look for is that it is called pure vanilla extract. According to Nielsen, pure vanilla extract is highly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. “To be classified as a pure vanilla extract, it has to be produced exclusively from cured vanilla beans and that law mandates that per gallon of vanilla extract, it must contain a minimum of 13.5 ounces of vanilla beans in a solution of no less than 35 percent alcohol,” he ...
How Is Vanilla Extract Made?
Vanilla comes from a tropical orchid, native to Mexico but now cultivated in various equatorial regions, including Central America, Africa, and the South Pacific. Indeed, more than 80 percent of the world's vanilla comes from Madagascar.
Growing and Harvesting Vanilla Beans
The vanilla orchid grows on a vine, and on vanilla farms, each vine needs its own tree to grow on. It can take up to three years for a vine to reach maturity and begin to flower. And when it does, the flower blooms for just one day. Moreover, the vanilla blossom must be pollinated by hand, on the precise day that it blooms.
Curing Vanilla Beans
The next step is curing the beans, which starts by blanching them, or briefly immersing them in hot (but not boiling) water, which halts the ripening process and activates an enzyme that starts the development of the bean's characteristic vanilla flavor.
Producing Vanilla Extract
Once the beans arrive at the extraction facility, they are ground into small pieces, exposing the seeds inside the pod, which contain the various volatile essential oils that produce the distinctive flavors and aromas of pure vanilla.
Imitation Vanilla: What Is It?
Imitation vanilla is simply a product made by synthesizing the vanillin molecule in some other way. Usually, synthetic vanillin is derived from plant fibers, particularly the flowering shrubs and trees of the guaiacum genus.
Imitation Vanilla or Pure: Which is Better?
So what does this mean? Should you get rid of your pure vanilla extract and start using artificial?
History
According to popular belief, the Totonac people, who live on the east coast of Mexico in the present-day state of Veracruz, were among the first people to cultivate vanilla, during the era of the Aztec Empire (around the 15th century ).
Etymology
Vanilla was completely unknown in the Old World before Cortés arrived in Mexico. Spanish explorers arriving on the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the early 16th century gave vanilla its current name. Portuguese sailors and explorers brought vanilla into Africa and Asia later that century. They called it vainilla, or "little pod".
Cultivation
In general, quality vanilla only comes from good vines and through careful production methods. Commercial vanilla production can be performed under open field and "greenhouse" operations. The two production systems share these similarities:
Contact dermatitis
The sap of most species of vanilla orchid which exudes from cut stems or where beans are harvested can cause moderate to severe dermatitis if it comes in contact with bare skin. The sap of vanilla orchids contains calcium oxalate crystals, which are thought to be the main causative agent of contact dermatitis in vanilla plantation workers.
For starters, what is vanilla?
To understand vanilla extract, you’ve got to know the basics about vanilla. First off, a vanilla bean is no bean—it’s actually the fruit of orchids in the genus Vanilla. Those vanilla orchids only grow in a very small subsection of the world, with Madagascar producing a whopping 80%.
I have a vanilla bean. Now what do I do?
To get to the seeds of the bean, use a paring knife to make a slit down the pod’s length, leaving the bottom intact. Open the sides like shutters to expose the grainy insides. Pressing gently, drag the flat side of the knife down the pod, gathering the seeds as you go. Then you’re ready to drop it into whatever sweet treat you’re cooking up.
Where does vanilla extract come from?
Vanilla extract—the kind that explicitly says “pure vanilla extract” on its label—is made by soaking vanilla beans in an alcohol solution to “extract” (get it?) all of their flavor compounds. According to the FDA, vanilla extract must be at least 35% alcohol with a minimum of 100 grams of vanilla beans per liter.
Pure Vanilla Extract
Or, make your own extract at home with vanilla beans and high-proof liquor like bourbon, vodka, or rum. You can store extract, whether store-bought or homemade, in a cool, dark place almost indefinitely.
Where does imitation vanilla come from?
Ninety-nine percent of the world’s vanilla extract is fake imitation vanilla that’s not a product of the plant itself. Instead, it's flavored primarily with synthetic vanillin (a lab-produced version of the same chemical compound that occurs naturally in real vanilla ).
What other forms does vanilla come in?
While extract and whole beans are among the most popular sources of vanilla flavor, they’re not the only ones out there. You can also purchase vanilla in the form of vanilla bean paste. A combination of vanilla bean seeds, extract, sugar, and natural gum thickeners, it gives you those classic speckles for a fraction of the price as whole beans.
Vanilla Bean Paste
Vanilla powder is less common and less versatile, but good for dry mixes like homemade pancake mix or dry rubs—it’s made from dried vanilla beans ground into a fine powder.
A Brief History of Vanilla Flavor
To understand why extracting “real” vanilla flavor is so difficult, we have to go back all the way to the early 1800s, when a young slave boy in the French colony of Réunion, Edmond Albius, created a method of hand-pollinating vanilla flowers in such a way that it yielded exponentially more than traditional wait-and-see methods.
Where Does Vanilla Flavor Come From? The Complicated Answer
By the early 1900s, scientists were able to extract vanillin, the “flavor” that we perceive as vanilla, from the vanilla plant. Vanillin was artificially synthesized through a combination of lignin, clove oil, pine bark, and rice bran, among other things.
Does Vanilla Flavor Come From Beaver Butts?
Over the course of a few decades in the early 1900s, scientists were experimenting with different combinations of both organic and artificial ingredients to create vanillin. One of the components they stumbled upon was castoreum, a type of chemical that is derived from, well, beaver butts.
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Overview
Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla (V. planifolia). The word vanilla, derived from vainilla, the diminutive of the Spanish word vaina (vaina itself meaning a sheath or a pod), is translated simply as "little pod". Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican people cultivated the vine of the vanilla orchid, calle…
History
According to popular belief, the Totonac people, who live on the east coast of Mexico in the present-day state of Veracruz, were among the first people to cultivate vanilla, during the era of the Aztec Empire (around the 15th century). Aztecs invading from the central highlands of Mexico conquered the Totonacs, and developed a taste for the vanilla pods. They named the fruit tlilxochitl, or "…
Etymology
Vanilla was completely unknown in the Old World before Cortés arrived in Mexico. Spanish explorers arriving on the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the early 16th century gave vanilla its current name. Portuguese sailors and explorers brought vanilla into Africa and Asia later that century. The word vanilla entered the English language in 1754, when the botanist Philip Miller wrote about the genus in his Gardener’s Dictionary. Vainilla is from the diminutive of vaina, from the Latin vagina …
Biology
The main species harvested for vanilla is V. planifolia. Although it is native to Mexico, it is now widely grown throughout the tropics. Indonesia and Madagascar are the world's largest producers. Additional sources include V. pompona and V. tahitiensis (grown in Niue and Tahiti), although the vanillin content of these species is much less than V. planifolia.
Cultivation
In general, quality vanilla only comes from good vines and through careful production methods. Commercial vanilla production can be performed under open field and "greenhouse" operations. The two production systems share these similarities:
• Plant height and number of years before producing the first grains
Production
In 2020, world production of vanilla was 7,614 tonnes, led by Madagascar with 39.1% of the total, and Indonesia with 30.3% (table). Due to drought, cyclones, and poor farming practices in Madagascar, there are concerns about the global supply and costs of vanilla in 2017 and 2018. The intensity of criminal enterprises against Madagascar farmers is high, elevating the worldwide cost of using Madagascar vanilla in consumer products.
Uses
The four main commercial preparations of natural vanilla are:
• Whole pod
• Powder (ground pods, kept pure or blended with sugar, starch, or other ingredients)
• Extract (in alcoholic or occasionally glycerol solution; both pure and imitation forms of vanilla contain at least 35% alcohol)
Contact dermatitis
The sap of most species of vanilla orchid which exudes from cut stems or where beans are harvested can cause moderate to severe dermatitis if it comes in contact with bare skin. The sap of vanilla orchids contains calcium oxalate crystals, which are thought to be the main causative agent of contact dermatitis in vanilla plantation workers.