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Tincture of Vanilla

A sweet vanilla tincture made by infusing vanilla beans in alcohol, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Tincture of Vanilla

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carefully select prime vanilla beans.

  2. Cut the beans into small pieces, ½ to 1 inch long, using an herb cutter.

Infuse

  1. Place the cut beans in a porcelain jar and pour 7 pints of boiling water over them.

  2. Cover the jar and let it stand for 24 hours to infuse.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Vanilla + beanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + spirittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mexican vanilla beans
Provide the vanilla flavor and aroma that are released into the liquid during infusion.
Cologne spirit
Alcohol that dissolves and extracts flavor compounds from the cut vanilla beans.

The step that matters

Cut the beans into small pieces. Smaller, evenly sized pieces expose more surface area, so flavor compounds dissolve more fully and evenly during the infusion.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, sugar, spirit):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, sugar, spirit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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