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Essence of Vanilla

A liquid concentrate made by steeping vanilla in alcohol and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Essence of Vanilla

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the vanilla into small pieces.

  2. Pound the vanilla fine in a marble mortar with the loaf sugar.

  3. Add the egg white and rectified spirit to the mixture.

Steep and strain

  1. Transfer the mixture to a glazed pot and cover it with writing paper, making a hole with a pin.

  2. Place the pot in warm water and maintain that heat for 24 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture for use.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Vanilla + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

Vanilla
Provides the main flavour, released into the liquid as the pieces are pounded and steeped.
Rectified spirit
Extracts and preserves the vanilla flavour compounds, which dissolve readily in alcohol.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the extract and helps break the vanilla down into a fine mixture.
Egg white
Helps clarify the liquid, binding fine particles so they can be strained out.

The step that matters

Maintaining warm steady heat for 24 hours. Gentle, steady warmth draws flavour out of the vanilla without boiling off the alcohol. Too much heat can evaporate the spirit and scorch the flavour, while letting the temperature drop slows extraction.

“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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