I don’t know about gum, but have you tried French vanilla Jelly Bellies? They are good alone or when eaten with another flavor.
Had to look this up. Yes, a member named **vanilla **was banned.
Thanks, Cookie!!
Vanilla is not the default flavor everywhere in the world. For example, in Russian and Ukraine simple sweet cream is the default. For them, vanilla isn’t vanilla.
Oh, yes! I had to run to the freezer and pull one out. Yum!
What is “French” vanilla? I thought vanilla comes from tropical jungly places. I’ve never come across French vanilla. Does it refer to French-style (egg custard) ice cream, as in French ice cream, vanilla flavoured, rather than French-vanilla-flavoured ice cream?
You got it, it’s an egg custard based vanilla flavor.
Yep: Per Wiki:
My theory is that in America we tend to confuse and conflate vanilla and sweet white creaminess. Yes, vanilla is in lots of desserts, but is it really the distinctive vanilla taste that most people think of or do they mostly think of sweet + cream?
I also think there’s a tendency to think of vanilla as the opposite of chocolate, which isn’t correct. Chocolate could never be the default flavor, it’s too strong. But it is a massively popular dessert flavor.
Take ice cream for example, if you aren’t eating chocolate ice cream and it’s not flavored with something unusual like coffee or cinnamon, what is it? Not necessarily vanilla at all, but I think that’s where people’s minds go.
I always thought that this was the key differentiator. French vanilla uses actual vanilla beans, and not just vanilla extract or flavoring.
My favorite vanilla ice cream - Breyers - has a ‘natural vanilla’ flavour, which contains real vanilla bean specks. Their ‘French Vanilla’ flavour also contains real vanilla, but has egg yolks, which is what makes it ‘French’ I believe.
Simply, it is by far the US majority’s favorite ice cream flavor. And there’s no accounting for taste (in the original sense), so no questioning as to why it’s so widely liked.
Actually, “vanilla beans” are the fermented fruit pods of an orchid, which are quite laborious to cultivate. It needs to be hand-pollinated since most countries that commercially produce vanilla lack the natural pollinators . However, the main flavor component, vanillin, is easy to synthesize and therefore cheap.
Which, I think, is a specific type of bee, right?
Yes, the Melipona bee, native to central America .
“Hey, Cookie Dough, nice chips!”
I’ve read (but don’t feel like looking for a cite) that those specks are made from real vanilla beans after the beans have been used to make vanilla extract. They’re called “spent” vanilla beans, and the only thing they add is decoration (if you can call tiny black specks decorative!)
Dammit! I knew my work would be taking me past a store with a wide selection of Jelly Bellys today, and I was really looking forward to getting some, but they didn’t have French Vanilla! My dream of chewy vanilla masticating goodness has been deferred and is drying up like a spent vanilla bean pod in the sun!