It's my understanding that modern "imitation" vanilla is chemically identical to the natural stuff. Even so, I buy the regular...

I read in an article that real vanilla only matters for applications that don't involve high heat, as the other flavors in a real vanilla bean get cooked out. Imitation is just as good for most purposes.

Just remembered, it was a food lab article:

https://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/taste-test-is-better-...

Food lab is my go to for food related articles interesting details behind the science and process of cooking.

Reading the article, they talk a lot about the alcohol cooking away leaving you tasting less alcohol in the product. Now my question is, where do I buy vanilla that comes in 35% alcohol solution? I can only ever remember seeing dry vanilla.

Amazon or many supermarkets?

https://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Natural-Vanilla-Extract-Glu...

It doubt that imitation vanilla copies all the chemicals that are present in natural vanilla, as there must be hundreds. With artificial flavorings they usually only copy the most dominant component.

You're right, but vanillin (C8H8O3) is very dominant (even in natural vanilla) and, as natural vanilla is cooked, a lot of the other compounds tend to be destroyed.

Destroyed? Broken down to other chemicals, surely. Or are we cooking at 10000K.

"Excuse me, but your house wasn't destroyed in the fire, it was merely broken down to other chemicals. Your insurance only covers destruction of property."

Lol; but if you were tasting the house then the materials will still affect the flavour despite having been burnt.

I bought a bottle of synthetic and a bottle of organic real vanilla extract recently, and did a taste/smell test.

The synthetic smelled and tasted like vanilla-flavored motor oil and rubbing alcohol. It was terrible, and cheap, and plentiful. I can't imagine what I could use it in to mask that chemical flavor. Ugh.

You drank straight vanilla extract? This seems like determining how good a cake will be by eating raw flour.

The aromas and flavors of vanilla extract are exactly what you will taste in your finished product. They don't really transform into anything, the ethanol and water just evaporate and leave you with the dissolved solids from the bean. Tasting it in raw or extract form tells you what it'll taste like in a finished product.

Flour, on the other hand, varies greatly in its end result based on the genetic variant, grade quality, and milling, in combination with amount of water and the mechanical process of mixing. You can determine the effect on the cake by looking at the type and grade of flour, along with its moisture content. I wouldn't advise eating it.

I don't think that's how food chemistry works.

The vanilla is going to interact with hundreds of volatile compounds during cooking while going through chemical changes. These things change the overall flavor. There's so many different things that can change how the end flavor comes through. Time and time again, it's been shown that the real vs fake vanilla thing doesn't matter for more complex foods (read: baked goods where maillard reactions are going to be common and the volatile aromatics present in real vanilla get destroyed)

{1}https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/real-vanilla-extrac... {2}https://www.cooksillustrated.com/taste_tests/455-vanilla-ext...

From- a reformed professional chef.

In ice cream, cocktails, whipped egg whites, and other foods that are minimally processed, the complexity of real vanilla makes a big difference. I'll eventually make some batches of cookies and small cakes and compare.

the synthetic is designed best to work as a cooking ingredient https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1081/FRI-120003417?sr...