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Dessert

Vanilla Extract

A homemade vanilla extract made by steeping vanilla beans in alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Vanilla Extract

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Break the vanilla beans into small pieces.

  2. Put the pieces into 1 pint of alcohol.

  3. Let it sit for a few days until ready to 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 + beanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla beans
Provide the vanilla flavor compounds that dissolve into the alcohol over time.
Alcohol
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the vanilla beans.

“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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