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[–] 11 points 1 day ago (1 child)

The reason that vanilla became… well, the poster child of blandness, is that it was one of the first and simplest flavours to be artificially created. So everyone threw the cheap flavouring into everything.

Synthetic vanilla is missing all the complexity, it’s just 1 chemical.

Real vanilla remains wonderful, and it’s sad how it’s been ill treated by industrial food companies.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago*

    Especially considering how much better the real stuff is to use now. You used to only have vanilla extract (which is alcohol after vanilla was steeped in it to draw out the soluble flavors) which pales in comparison to the fresh stuff (use it in baked goods where most of the volatiles would evaporate anyway), and whole vanilla pods, which required laborious splitting and scraping with a sharp knife to get the seeds and pulp. Nowadays you can buy jarred vanilla paste, which is 98% as good as a freshly scraped pod while requiring 0% of the effort.

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