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Comment by sk5t | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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