Name: Vanilla Flavor
Ingredients: 4 vanilla beans; 1 quart white whiskey or wine spirits

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 Flavor

Ingredients

4 vanilla beans
1 quart white whiskey or wine spirits

Directions

Prepare

Cut the vanilla beans into one-inch pieces and split them.
Place the pieces in a quart bottle.
Pour the white whiskey or wine spirits over the vanilla beans.

Infuse

Cork the bottle tightly and keep it tightly corked at all times.
Shake the bottle well every day for a week.

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.

Vanilla + beanstop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Vanilla + winetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together887 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Beans + winetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla beans: Release their flavor compounds into the spirit, giving the infusion its vanilla aroma and taste.
White whiskey or wine spirits: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the vanilla beans over time.