Food - Bee Wilson won't believe in "plain spice"
Some foods we are accustomed to "tasting", as we do wine. Cheese is the most natural choice for such activity, but the status has also been accorded to single-estate olive oil, different kinds of old English apples, chocolate, coffee and even butter (do you prefer Alpine or Dutch, Normandy or Somerset?). By "tasting", we are recognising certain foods' capacity to assume a multitude of forms and flavours. We are, in short, putting them on the A-list of gastronomy.
Other kinds of foods, for which we perhaps set lower aspirations, we do not need to "taste". These items are merely "tastes" in themselves, building blocks of flavour that we take for granted. Vanilla is often treated thus. You can have high-quality vanilla and you can have low quality, you can have beans or extract - the real or the fake kind - but there the issue ends. Vanilla (or, at least, artificially produced vanillin) is such an overused flavouring, that we barely notice its fragrance any more. Perhaps this is why chefs have taken to sprinkling whole podsful of vanilla seeds into their sauces and ice creams, like trails of black pepper, in an attempt to make us wake up and smell the vanilla. This heavy-handed strategy may backfire, coarsening what can be, at its best, the most graceful of spices.
It is a revelation, then, to discover how many different vanillas there are, and, what's more, how unlike each other they are. Using Culpeper's excellent range of pure extracts, packaged in small, dark brown bottles to keep the flavour true, I recently compared the four main kinds: Madagascan, Indonesian, Mexican and Tahitian.
Mexican vanilla is often said to be the finest, which has a sort of primary correctness, given that Vanilla planifolia, a species of tropical orchid, is native to Central America. The Aztecs used it to add smoothness to chocolate. It did not reach the Old World until the 16th century. Even now, pollination of the vanilla vine can occur naturally in Mexico only. Vanilla pods are harvested unripe, when they have little or no aroma. It is only after they have been plunged into boiling water, and then baked and sweated on wool blankets for up to a month, that these long, sticky capsules develop their flavour. The Culpeper Mexican extract reminded me of the hot sun that produced it.
The Madagascan extract tasted more like a classic "plain vanilla" flavouring, brown, rich, caramelly and pure, suggestive of egg custards and cake batters. This is the Bourbon vanilla of every apple-cheeked cake-baker's cupboard. It tastes so familiar partly because Madagascar has for a long time been the world's dominant producer of vanilla. That may be about to change: most of the vanilla used in the US now comes from Indonesia. Given a choice, though, I'd still take Madagascan. The Indonesian extract was sweet and earthy, but somehow thin-tasting as it lingered on the tongue.
Far and away the most delicious one, to my taste at least, was the Tahitian. It was in a different league, in aroma as well as cost, as indeed it should be; Tahitian vanilla is actually a separate species. For some magical reason, Vanilla tahitensis grows only in the South Pacific. This is all the more mysterious, given that the plant is not native to Tahiti (it was only brought there in 1848).
Whatever, the extract is wonderful, at once lighter and more pervasive than all the others, with an exceptional perfume, like a Frenchwoman eating bread-and-butter pudding. The scent has so seduced me that now I want to get hold of different grades of actual Tahitian beans, and do yet further vanilla "tasting".
Prices for Culpeper's extracts (30ml) range from £2.45 to £3.85. Call 01223 894 054; www.culpeper.co.uk
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