Why ‘vanilla’ really isn't the word you want

As a home baker who loves nothing more than to split a fresh vanilla pod lengthways and slide the point of a knife down its insides to extract the black gold that lies within, it pains me every time someone describes something bland and boring as ‘vanilla’.

By weight, vanilla is the second-most expensive spice after saffron, those highly prized threads that come from the crocus flower. Why? Because it is labour-intensive to produce – all commercially available vanilla has been hand-pollinated. It is derived from orchids of the Vanilla genus, and is most often the pods of the flat-leaved vanilla.

Real vanilla is not that sad little bottle of vanilla essence your granny took down from the pantry shelf to bake a cake. It's not boring, bland or generic in any way. Real vanilla has a delicate, complex perfume that wraps you in the warmth of the tropics. Its tiny seeds fleck the substance of whatever you bake it in. Once you've tasted it, there's no going back, and you will stash the discarded pods in a jar of sugar to eke out their flavour. It is the law.

So if you do just one thing, learn just one thing from this newsletter, it's this: to describe something as ‘vanilla’ is to describe it as valuable, as complex, as highly prized. I'd suggest you go with something like ‘beige’.