Vanilla extract
31 May 2019 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI had to buy a new bottle of vanilla extract/essence recently, for the first time in a long while (I tend to use my jar of sugar with the twenty-five-year-old vanilla pods in it, still aromatic).
I'm used to its being a highly volatile liquid that has to be dripped with great care — the new bottle could only be described as gooey, and it was quite hard to get a drop to come out of the lid (my normal dispensing method, to avoid mistakes) at all. Looking at the ingredients revealed that instead of being dissolved in alcohol, as normal, this batch had been dissolved in glucose syrup, with predictable results; it was more like handling glycerine than vanilla essence.
Presumably in the sort of quantities that one uses for flavouring, the extra sugar doesn't make any discernable diference to the recipe, but it certainly makes it harder to handle (and more wasteful, meaning that it gets used up faster, as the cynic in me would comment). I wonder if this new formulation could possibly be to allow it to be sold into the Muslim market?
(Personally, I'm teetotal, but I've never objected to the use of flavourless alcohol to dissolve flower essences, etc. But then it's not a religious taboo...)
I'm used to its being a highly volatile liquid that has to be dripped with great care — the new bottle could only be described as gooey, and it was quite hard to get a drop to come out of the lid (my normal dispensing method, to avoid mistakes) at all. Looking at the ingredients revealed that instead of being dissolved in alcohol, as normal, this batch had been dissolved in glucose syrup, with predictable results; it was more like handling glycerine than vanilla essence.
Presumably in the sort of quantities that one uses for flavouring, the extra sugar doesn't make any discernable diference to the recipe, but it certainly makes it harder to handle (and more wasteful, meaning that it gets used up faster, as the cynic in me would comment). I wonder if this new formulation could possibly be to allow it to be sold into the Muslim market?
(Personally, I'm teetotal, but I've never objected to the use of flavourless alcohol to dissolve flower essences, etc. But then it's not a religious taboo...)