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Dessert

Vanilla Essence, Genuine

A vanilla essence made by percolating vanilla beans and cinnamon bark with wine distillate, raisin tincture, alcohol, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Vanilla Essence, Genuine

final yield 10 lb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Percolate the vanilla beans and cinnamon bark with the wine distillate.

  2. Add the raisin tincture, alcohol, and water.

  3. Mix well and do not collect any after-percolate.

  4. The final yield will be 10 lb.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Beans + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla beans
Provide the main vanilla flavour and aroma that define the essence.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma that rounds out the vanilla.
Wine distillate
Acts as the liquid medium that carries flavour compounds out of the beans and bark.
Alcohol
Dissolves aromatic compounds from the botanicals, extracting flavour that water alone draws out less well.

The step that matters

Do not collect any after-percolate. The last runnings from percolation are weak and dilute. Keeping them would lower the strength of the finished essence, so they are set aside and the batch stays consistent.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, cinnamon, wine, raisin, rose):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cinnamon, wine, raisin, rose. 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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