Both have an aroma that is subtle, sweet, and spicy, although the Tahitian smelled a bit sweeter to me. Having said that, the Madagascar Bourbon and Tahitian vanillas both smelled very similar to me. Then someone commented here that Play-Doh smells like vanilla and not the other way around. To me, concentrated vanilla extract smells kind of like Play-Doh. Vanilla Tasting Notes Tasting the Extracts “Straight” To try and keep the tests as fair as possible, I used a bit more of the paste and tried really hard not to pay attention to the sweetness. I also need to note that the Madagascar Bourbon vanilla I have is paste, which aside from vanilla extract also contains sugar, vanilla beans, gum tragacanth and a small amount (0.1%) of potassium sorbate as a preservative. If I’d had a control group, I would have just tasted straight milk and made pudding and cookies without any vanilla in them at all.īut I’m only human and there are only so many glasses of milk One can drink and cookies and pudding that One can eat! A Note on the Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla I Used I smelled and tasted them in vanilla shortbread (baking the extracts in, this time).I smelled and tasted them in vanilla pudding (stirring in the extracts off the heat).I smelled and tasted them in whole milk.I smelled and tasted them diluted in water.I smelled and tasted the vanillas straight.Here’s what I did to conduct my vanilla taste test: If I were conducting a scientific experiment, I would have had a “control group” that didn’t contain any vanilla at all, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t. Note that these preconceptions did not necessarily all hold up after tasting. The differences among the three types of vanilla will be readily apparent.Tahitian vanilla is mostly about aroma, not actual flavor.Mexican vanilla extract is kind of shady, although the beans are great.Madagascar Bourbon vanilla is the gold standard of vanillas.02:25 am GMT My Preconceived Ideas About the Types of Vanilla If I can find some, I’ll give them a whirl, too). (Some vanilla is produced in both Indonesia and India, but I haven’t come across it before. Now I had the opportunity to try all three vanillas, side by side. I’ve used Mexican vanilla beans before in pudding, and I love the woody mysteriousness of it, and although I adore Sonoma Syrup’s Vanilla Bean “Crush” (a blend of Madagascar Bourbon and Tahitian vanilla), I’d never had Tahitian vanilla on its own. In the restaurants, we used Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla pastes and extracts. I was curious to try them in a head-to-head taste test since I had some preconceived notions of which type of vanilla was “best” without really ever trying all of them for myself. Recently, I purchased three different vanilla extracts:
Why Compare the Different Types of Vanilla? Real vanilla is almost always brown, and using a scraped vanilla bean will give you little specks in your frosting, so for a super white vanilla-flavored icing, clear vanilla is the only way to go. Clear vanilla is useful when you want vanilla flavor but you still want your icing to be bright white. Is “Clear Vanilla” Imitation Vanilla?Ĭlear vanilla is definitely imitation vanilla, so it is pretty much straight up vanillin. That’s why imitation vanilla is both less subtle and less complex than true vanilla derived from vanilla beans.įrom now on, if you want to describe something or someone as being plain, boring or lackluster, please use the term vanillin.
Imitation vanilla, on the other hand, is composed almost entirely of one flavor note: vanillin. While it is true that the majority of what we think of as the “smell” or “taste” or vanilla comes from vanillin, there are tons of other compounds that serve to round out and add nuance to the flavor. Vanilla is one of the most complex flavors around, containing upwards of 200 different flavor compounds.ĭue to the labor-intensive nature of its cultivation, harvest and processing, vanilla is also second only to saffron in cost, and the price has risen quite a bit over the last few years due to difficult growing conditions, shipping cost, and more. I am always amazed when people use the word vanilla as an adjective to describe something or someone who is plain, boring or lackluster. 10 Vanilla Taste Test of the Different Types of Vanilla: The Take-Aways The Magic of Vanilla
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