Marlene Parrish - What Einstein Told His Cook 2

Today, about three-quarters of the world’s vanilla production is of the Mexican V. planifolia variety but grown on the islands of Madagascar, the Comoros, and Réunion in the Indian Ocean. In the early nineteenth century these islands were under the rule of the Bourbon kings of France, and the vanilla from this region is still known as Bourbon vanilla. (No relation to you know what.)

When the vanilla orchid plant blooms, it produces only a few flowers at a time. Each flower opens in the morning, closes in the afternoon, and if not pollinated drops dead from the vine the following day. If it is to bear its valuable fruit it must be pollinated during the morning hours of its day of glory.

How, then, did vanilla plants manage to reproduce and survive for eons before humans came along and tried to cultivate them? Attempts to grow vanilla in parts of the world other than Mexico were unsuccessful for about three hundred years. Eventually it was discovered that a small bee of the genus Melipona , native only to Mexico, had been quietly doing the pollination job, as bees are wont to do. Today, almost all vanilla flowers in both Mexico and Madagascar are pollinated by human hands, using thin slivers of wood inserted precisely into each flower at precisely the right time. No bee was ever so meticulous. (Are you beginning to understand why vanilla is so expensive?)

When the vanilla pod reaches its maximum length of about 8 inches, it is harvested, dried in the sun for 10 to 30 days, and covered at night to sweat and ferment. Only then will the pods have developed their magnificent flavor and aroma.

Some 170 different chemicals have been identified in the aroma of vanilla, but most of it comes from the aromatic phenolic compound vanillin. Fortunately or unfortunately, humans can make vanillin much more efficiently than vanilla plants can. It can be synthesized from eugenol, the principal aromatic constituent of clove oil, or from guaiacol, a chemical found in tropical tree resins. Vanillin can also be made from lignin, a structural component of woody plants and a byproduct of the manufacture of paper from wood pulp. But vanillin is no longer made that way in the United States or Canada because the process is environmentally unacceptable.

Synthetic vanillin is the main ingredient in artificial or “imitation” vanilla, which costs much less than real vanilla extract and is actually not too bad a substitute for the real thing, although it lacks the complexity of natural vanilla flavor. Synthetic vanillin used as a flavoring in packaged foods must be labeled as an artificial flavor. (But see “It’s a natural—or is it?” chapter 10.)

Whole vanilla beans are sold in airtight containers to keep them from drying out and losing their flowery bouquet. They should be as dark and soft as a stick of licorice candy, not too hard or leathery. Most of the flavor resides in and around the thousands of almost microscopic seeds, which can be exposed by slitting the bean lengthwise. They can be scraped out with the tip of a knife and added to custards, sauces, and batters. But the seed-shorn pod still contains a lot of flavor. Bury it in a jar of sugar, tightly covered, and leave it for a couple of weeks. Use the vanilla-suffused sugar in, well, custards, sauces, and batters.

Vanilla extract is much more convenient to use than whole beans. In its inimitable bureaucratic style, the FDA defines Pure Vanilla Extract as “the solution in aqueous ethyl alcohol of the sapid and odorous principles extractable from vanilla beans.” To be labeled as such it must have an alcohol content of at least 35 percent by volume (higher concentration of alcohol extracts more of vanilla’s subtle flavor) and be made from no less than 13.35 ounces of vanilla beans per gallon. (Don’t ask.) It may contain sugar and other ingredients such as glycerin or propylene glycol for smoothness, but if it contains added synthetic vanillin, it must be labeled Imitation Vanilla Flavoring.

And finally, the Mexican connection.

Mexico lost its world leadership in vanilla production when the revolution of 1910 destroyed most of its Gulf Coast vanilla plantations. But its reputation lingers on, and Mexican “vanilla extract” is widely available. But because labeling laws aren’t enforced in Mexico as strictly as they are in the United States, Mexican “vanilla extract” may be a vanillin-based imitation flavoring.

Worse yet, some Mexican and Caribbean vanilla products might contain coumarin (1,2-benzopyrone), which is extracted from the beanlike seeds of the tonka tree, Dipteryx odorata ( cumaru in Spanish). Coumarin has a strong vanilla-like aroma but is toxic; under the name warfarin it is used as rat poison because it thins the blood and the poisoned rats bleed to death internally. As the drug coumadin, it is used as an anticoagulant in the treatment of heart disease.

Coumarin was completely banned as a food additive by the FDA in 1954.

The bottom-line caveat is this: Be wary of Mexican and Caribbean “vanilla” liquids. At best, they may be imitation, made from synthetic vanillin, and at worst, they may contain coumarin. In theory, the FDA is supposed to block the import of coumarin-containing products, but coumarin has been found in some imports that slipped through.

Chapter Nine

Galley Gear

WHETHER CALLED a kitchen, galley, caboose, chuckwagon, or cookhouse, and whether situated in a home or restaurant, on a ship, freight train, or wagon train, or even outdoors wherever a shelter can be set up, it is a place dedicated to the vital task of preparing food for anyone from a sole diner to an army. Its barest essentials are a few pots of clay or metal, sources of heat and water, and perhaps a knife. All else is excess.

And in today’s kitchens, boy, do we have excess!

We have refrigerators; gas, electric, and induction ranges; convection and microwave ovens; mixers; blenders; nonstick cookware; and—well, just look around your kitchen, you lucky dog. You’ve come a long way, baby.

But just as these tools have to be in proper shape to deal with a variety of foods, we have to know how to deal with the tools themselves. There is nothing more frustrating to a craftsman than having to repair a tool before being able to use it.

Does your dishwasher eat your aluminum utensils? Does your refrigerator exude an uninvited fragrance? Does your butter keeper spoil your butter? Does your oven cook a roast faster or slower than the recipe says? Do your pizzas come out flabby and your cakes goopy?

It’s all in how you use your armamentarium of appliances, apparatuses, equipment, tackle, gear, gadgets, and utensils. Treat them with understanding and respect, for as Emerson wrote, “If you do not use the tools, they use you.”

Or, to paraphrase Thoreau, you become the tools of your tools.

THE FOODIE’S FICTIONARY:Microwave—a baby’s bye-bye gesture

IN SEARCH OF SMELLICULES

I’ve always kept an open box of baking soda in my refrigerator to absorb odors. But I’ve noticed that there’s now a new kind of baking soda box in the supermarket that supposedly works even better, even though the label says it contains nothing but pure baking soda. How does baking soda absorb odors, and how does this new contraption do it better?

Like every other householder in this country, I have religiously kept an open box of Arm & Hammer (is there any other kind?) baking soda in my refrigerator, and I can testify that I have never smelled a bad odor. It must also have worked to repel tigers, because not once did I encounter a tiger in my house as long as that baking soda box was in the fridge.

Is it possible that I never saw a tiger because I live so far from India, or that I never smelled a foul odor in my refrigerator because I’m such a fastidious fridgemeister? Nah! Not according to the Arm & Hammer Division of Church & Dwight Co., Inc., and every domestic maven in the U.S.A., who would staunchly maintain that the baking soda absorbed all the odors. (They make no claims about tigers.)