Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog obam Here a trip down the Baking Aisle.
Speaker 1: Can Land. Budget shoppers in a serious quandary. Why pay
Speaker 1: nearly twenty dollars for four ounces that's a hundred and
Speaker 1: nineteen milli liters of pure vanilla extract when you can
Speaker 1: get the same amount of imitation vanilla flavor for less
Speaker 1: than five bucks. Why does real vanilla cost an arm
Speaker 1: and a leg. There are a few good reasons. It's
Speaker 1: a classic case of supply and demand. Much of the
Speaker 1: world's supply of vanilla beans about is grown in just
Speaker 1: one place, the island of Madagascar and nearby Reunion. The
Speaker 1: last few years have seen these islands ravaged by multiple
Speaker 1: storms like Cyclone and awo in, wrecking thousands of plants
Speaker 1: and driving prices up to more than six hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per kilo or around three hundred per pound, which is
Speaker 1: ten times what the prices were a few years previous.
Speaker 1: Although twenty nineteen prices proved to be more stable than
Speaker 1: the fluctuating rates of was forecast to seat production reduced
Speaker 1: by which could send costs shooting upward again, but that
Speaker 1: was predicted before the COVID nineteen pandemic happened, which seems
Speaker 1: to be sending prices lower. The other major contribution to
Speaker 1: sky hive and ella prices is the fact that the
Speaker 1: plant is just difficult to grow. Species of vanilla are
Speaker 1: members of the orchid family. The bean is the orchids fruit.
Speaker 1: It's only able to grow ten to twenty degrees north
Speaker 1: or south of the equator. The flowers grow on evergreen,
Speaker 1: climbing stems. The blooming season lasts just a couple of months,
Speaker 1: with a mere handful of fragile, green, white, or yellow
Speaker 1: flowers blossoming each day, and each flower only opening for
Speaker 1: pollination for one single morning before they wither and fall
Speaker 1: off the plant. They're so delicate that they're only known
Speaker 1: pollinators in the wild are species of tiny bees and
Speaker 1: birds that evolved alongside them in their native Central American habitat.
Speaker 1: So basically, if you're not growing vanilla in Mexico, and
Speaker 1: again most vanilla isn't, you have to hand pollinate. The
Speaker 1: hand pollination process is difficult and requires an experienced person
Speaker 1: to perform it successfully. Typically it's done by farmers who
Speaker 1: have been in the vanilla growing game for generations. The
Speaker 1: process doesn't end once the beans are harvested either. Freshly
Speaker 1: harvested vanilla pods are actually pretty bland. The crop must
Speaker 1: be cooked, sweat dried, and cured in a truly prostincty
Speaker 1: operation that prevents rotting and allows a number of enzymatic
Speaker 1: and friendly bacterial processes to develop some two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty flavor compounds that we love about real vanilla. From
Speaker 1: getting to end growth to export, the whole shebang takes
Speaker 1: a solid year, and that is why vanilla is the
Speaker 1: second costliest spice in the world, after only saffron. Ironically,
Speaker 1: many farmers in Madagascar had moved away from growing this
Speaker 1: labor intensive crop before Cycloninao made landfall because of low
Speaker 1: prices for the product. At the same time, consumer interest
Speaker 1: in real vanilla had started to increase, further exacerbating the
Speaker 1: supply problem. So is real vanilla worth the price? In baking?
Speaker 1: Vanilla does a lot more than just make something taste vanilla.
Speaker 1: With all those flavor compounds, it can enhance other flavors
Speaker 1: in sometimes unexpected ways. That said, when a recipe calls
Speaker 1: for pure vanilla extract, can be tempting to sidestep the
Speaker 1: authentic but pricey version in favor of the much cheaper
Speaker 1: imitation stuff, which is typically lab synthesized vanillen. Vanilla is
Speaker 1: one of those many taste and aroma compounds that's produced
Speaker 1: when you cure vanilla beans, but there are lots of
Speaker 1: other ways to get the same molecule. You can use
Speaker 1: yeast or bacteria to ferment an oil from cloves or
Speaker 1: an acid from rice bran fed. One of those things
Speaker 1: be specialized and often proprietary microorganisms basically poop vanilla. Those
Speaker 1: sort of products are considered natural vanillen that you can
Speaker 1: also heat and pressure treat an alcohol that comes from
Speaker 1: spruce trees to produce vanillen. As of the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: a lot of the world's vanillen was actually a byproduct
Speaker 1: of the wood pulp and paper industries. Finally, you can
Speaker 1: synthesize vanilla in a lab using an oil that's a
Speaker 1: byproduct of the petroleum industry. Those two, the wood pulp
Speaker 1: and petroleum versions, are considered artificial vanillen. The petroleum version
Speaker 1: is the cheapest of a lot by far, especially since
Speaker 1: wooden paper industries worked to reduce their waste in the
Speaker 1: two thousands However, if you've heard that some artificial vanilla
Speaker 1: flavoring comes from the butt glands of beavers, yes, this
Speaker 1: is a rumor that's incorrect on multiple levels. First Off,
Speaker 1: any product derived from an animal would be called natural. Secondly,
Speaker 1: while it is is true that beavers do produce a
Speaker 1: sort of vanilla's scented substance in a gland that's near
Speaker 1: the base of their tails, it's not from their anus,
Speaker 1: and it's not actually financially viable to milk beaver glands
Speaker 1: at a rate that would satisfy the world's interest in
Speaker 1: vanilla flavoring. The gland secretion, by the way, is called castoreum,
Speaker 1: and beavers use it to mark their territory and to
Speaker 1: impress humans by spelling just absolutely lovely. It did see
Speaker 1: some use in the eighteen hundreds as a perfume ingredient
Speaker 1: and food additive, during the time when beaver fur was
Speaker 1: all the rage in fashion and beavers were being hunted
Speaker 1: in large numbers. It still shows up the fragrance industries sometimes,
Speaker 1: but it's expensive and uncommon at any rate. The real
Speaker 1: vanilla is rare. The vanilla flavoring used in foods we eat,
Speaker 1: like vanilla ice cream is synthetic. If you can afford
Speaker 1: to splurge on a few beans, it can be really worthwhile.
Speaker 1: Though there are simple recipes online for extracting lots of
Speaker 1: flavor from them. You can even scrape the time reflect
Speaker 1: black seeds from the pods for use in a special recipe,
Speaker 1: and then reuse the fleshy husks multiple times, drawing out
Speaker 1: flavor by steeping them in liquid or storing them in
Speaker 1: granulated sugar. Today's episode was written by Aliya Hoyt and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. To learn more about vanilla, check
Speaker 1: out my podcast about food science and history. It's called Savor.
Speaker 1: And for more on this and lots of other not
Speaker 1: so vanilla topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Green
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