Ingredient: Vanilla
Category: Flavourings
Season: All
Vanilla is a flavouring derived from orchids in the genus Vanilla , native to Mexico.
The name came from the Spanish word " vainilla ," meaning "little pod."
Vanilla is valued for its sweet flavour and scent and is widely used in the preparation of desserts and perfumes.
Today, the majority of the world's vanilla is produced in a small region on the island of Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean
The fruit (a seed capsule), if left on the plant, will ripen and open at the end; it will then release the distinctive vanilla smell. The fruit contains tiny, flavourless seeds. In dishes prepared with whole natural vanilla, these seeds are recognisable as black specks.
Stages of production
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Harvest
The pods are harvested while green and immature. At this stage, they are odourless.
Killing
The vegetative tissue of the vanilla pod is killed to prevent further growing. The method of killing varies, but may be accomplished by sun killing, oven killing, hot water killing, killing by scratching, or killing by freezing.
Sweating
The pods are held for 7 to 10 days under hot (45º-65°C or 115º-150°F) and humid conditions; pods are often placed into fabric covered boxes immediately after boiling. This allows enzymes to process the compounds in the pods into vanillin and other compounds important to the final vanilla flavour.
Drying
To prevent rotting and to lock the aroma in the pods, the pods are dried. Often, pods are laid out in the sun during the mornings and returned to their boxes in the afternoons. When 25-30% of the pods' weight is moisture (as opposed to the 60-70% they began drying with) they have completed the curing process and will exhibit their fullest aromatic qualities.
Grading
Once fully cured, the vanilla is sorted by quality and graded. |
Culinary uses
There are three main commercial preparations of natural vanilla :
Whole pod
Powder (ground pods, kept pure or blended with sugar, starch or other ingredients)
Extract (in alcoholic solution)
Vanilla flavouring in food may be achieved by adding vanilla extract or by cooking vanilla pods in the liquid preparation.
A stronger aroma may be attained if the pods are split in two, exposing more of the pod's surface area to the liquid. In this case, the pods' seeds are mixed into the preparation.
Natural vanilla gives a brown or yellow colour to preparations , depending on the concentration
Good quality vanilla has a strong aromatic flavour , but food with small amounts of low quality vanilla or artificial vanilla-like flavourings are far more common, since true vanilla is much more expensive.
A major use of vanilla is in flavouring ice cream . The most common flavour of ice cream is vanilla, and thus most people consider it to be the "default" flavour. By analogy, the term "vanilla" is sometimes used as a synonym for "plain".
The cosmetics industry uses vanilla to make perfume.
The food industry uses methyl and ethyl vanillin .
Ethyl vanillin is more expensive , but has a stronger note.
Cook's Illustrated ran several taste tests pitting vanilla against vanillin in baked goods and other applications, and to the consternation of the magazine editors, tasters could not differentiate the flavour of vanillin from vanilla; however, for the case of vanilla ice cream, natural vanilla won out.
The term French vanilla is not a type of vanilla, but is often used to designate preparations that have a strong vanilla aroma, and contain vanilla grains.
The name originates from the French style of making ice cream custard base with vanilla pods, cream, and egg yolks.
Alternatively, French vanilla is taken to refer to a vanilla-custard flavour.
Syrup labelled as French vanilla may include custard, caramel or butterscotch flavours in addition to vanilla.
Vanilla essence comes in two forms .
Real seedpod extract is an extremely complicated mixture of several hundred different compounds.
Synthetic essence , consisting basically of a solution of synthetic vanillin in ethanol, is derived from phenol and is of high purity |