The lovely black seed pod with it's oh so tasty beans. Bakers and pastry chefs the world around love to use vanilla as a flavoring and to enhance other flavors found in baked goods.
Where does vanilla come from?
Real vanilla extract is obtained from the flat-leafed vanilla orchid and was originally harvested in Mexico. Often vanilla producers will boast of the locale of manufacture of their vanilla extract. Names such as Madagascar Vanilla, Bourbon Vanilla (named for the French Island Re'union...formerly called Ile Bourbon - not the famous American Whisky), Mexican Vanilla, West Indies Vanilla, or Tahitian Vanilla. Mexican vanilla is banned in the US because it is often not a pure extract and is mixed with other fragrant beans that are known to cause liver damage...SO, don't bring home vanilla for your friends on your next trip to Mexico!
Why is vanilla so great?
The familiar scent and flavor is from the chemical vanillin (for the chemists out there...4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde). However, the unique locale of harvest for the vanilla can also impart regional differences that account for the preference for Madagascar vs. Tahitian vanilla's, etc.
When the pastry chef wants to impart strong vanilla flavor, they reach for whole vanilla beans. The beans, which we soak in vodka at The Bakery to help release flavor and keep them soft, release many of the hundreds of complex chemicals into our foods...our best example is our pastry cream which we make with real vanilla beans, not extract, in order to give an intense vanilla flavor and aroma.
So, why not use vanilla beans all the time?
That's because after saffron, vanilla is the second most expensive "spice." Thus extracts are made to minimize this great expense (The Bakery pays over $100 per pound of real vanilla beans.) Plus, a little vanilla goes a very long way.
What about real vanilla extract vs. imitation vanilla?
[Some notes about imitation vanilla first...1) it contains vanillin, just like real vanilla 2) it derived from the wood pulp used in paper making (which we have lots of) 3)it is synthetic 4) it is very inexpensive due to it's abundance.]
While imitation vanilla still imparts a strong vanilla flavor but lacks the other subtle flavors that are found in natural vanilla. The baker's preference is to use imitation vanilla in items to be baked and real vanilla extract in item that are not baked. Baking tends to reduce the flavor of natural vanilla and eliminate the subtle differences that would be noted when not baked. That doesn't mean that all bakers do this, but, it can cause them to charge unnecessarily high prices because they've used expensive vanilla!
To the professional baker, vanilla is sort of like salt...How's that?
Vanilla helps improve the flavor of baked goods and enhances other flavors, similar to what salt does. So next time you are baking and wonder why your chocolate cake contains vanilla you'll know that it's to enhance the chocolate flavor!
Finally, what does raw vanilla taste like?
In a word, bitter! I recommend against tasting the vanilla extract in your cabinet. Too much vanilla can ruin a batter. So, while it smells great, without sugar present, it doesn't taste as good as it smells!
