Name: Extracts of Vanilla
Ingredients: 4 ounces vanilla beans (cut longitudinally or bruised); 2 pints alcohol (72 degrees)

Extracts of Vanilla

Ingredients

4 ounces vanilla beans (cut longitudinally or bruised)
2 pints alcohol (72 degrees)

Directions

Combine the vanilla beans and alcohol in a jar and seal the jar tightly.
Let it stand for 10 days, shaking occasionally.

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla beans: Provide the flavor compounds that dissolve into the alcohol to make the extract.
Alcohol: Acts as the solvent that draws flavor out of the vanilla beans and preserves the extract.

“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.