Name: Extract of Vanilla
Ingredients: 1 vanilla bean; ½ cup cold water; ½ pint best alcohol; more than ½ cup alcohol

Extract of Vanilla

Ingredients

1 vanilla bean
½ cup cold water
½ pint best alcohol
more than ½ cup alcohol

Directions

Prepare

Break the vanilla bean into 1‑inch pieces.
Cover the pieces with cold water in a tightly corked bottle and let it stand for four days.

Finish the extract

After four days, add ½ pint of the best alcohol and let it sit for one week.
After one week, transfer the liquid to another bottle.
Add more than ½ cup of alcohol to the remaining vanilla bean pieces.

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 bean: Source of the flavour compounds that are drawn out into the liquid.
Alcohol: Dissolves the vanilla flavour compounds and helps preserve 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.