There is an odd thing that almost always seems to be the case for chocolate: they add vanillin to it. (Vanillin is an artificial flavor, apparently derived from vanilla, in case you didn’t know.) This is the case for all kinds of chocolate. Cheap and more expensive, candy bar and box of chocolates.
This is kind of a let down for me, because I like my food to be all natural, and to not have its flavor derived from any artificial flavor. And I like to think chocolate is one of nature’s perfect foods.
So why do they always add it to chocolate? What is it supposed to do?
Um - vanillin is either natural or artificial vanilla extract. It can absolutely be a natural flavor.
It is always present in chocolate because we have come to associate chocolate candy with a mild vanilla undertone. Leave it out and chocolate would taste like scratch hot cocoa (actually most people add a little vanilla to cocoa, so you’d have to omit that). Not unpleasant, but not what you expect candy to taste like.
Just buy higher-end chocolate. The bar of Green & Black’s dark chocolate in my desk drawer has the following ingredients: chocolate liquor, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla extract, whole milk powder. The vanilla’s still in there for its flavour, as noted above — but it’s not an artificial flavour.
Vanillin is also a useful additive for unsaturated polyester resins. I have about 10 lbs of crystalline vanillin in my lab.
mad scientist cackle
Yep, it smells just like vanilla. I think they add it to colas too.
In polyesters it evens out the cure quite nicely. Also makes the resin smell better (no joke). I’m not sure of the chemistry of how it works. But it does.
As per MikeS, while “more expensive” chocolate may have vanillin, premium dark chocolate usually sticks to real vanilla. I don’t care for Green & Black myself, but El Rey also uses the real stuff. Meanwhile a company like Guittard uses vanillin in their cheaper stuff, real vanilla in their fancier bar chocolates. You just have to search a bit ( and be prepared to pay a bit more - premium chocolate can be pretty pricey relative to the amount of product. )
Vanillin isn’t extracted from vanilla. There’d be no point in doing that - the reason vanillin is used is because vanilla is more expensive. Artificial vanillin is made out of wood, which I guess isn’t that surprisng - real vanilla is sort of made out of wood also.
For what it’s worth, artificially produced vanillin is identical to the natural vanillin in real vanilla extract. There is a taste difference - while vanillin is the dominant flavor in vanilla extract, there are other subtle flavor agents that are present in natural vanilla but aren’t added to artificial “vanilla”. Which theoretically makes vanillin a “purer” flavor as it lacks the other flavors which are arguably diluting the vanilla flavor in natural vanilla.
I think its also worth noting that artificial flavorings and natural flavorings are the same things. The difference is in how it is processed.
In Fast Food Nation, Schlosser gives the example of creating natural banana flavoring, a process that begins with extracting a compound from an actual banana. Artificial banana flavoring is made by just starting with that compound, and skipping the extra step. If I had the book handy, I would look up the name of the compound, but I believe I sold it.
Well, not exactly. Maybe in a few cases. But not absolutely.
“Natural chemistry” tends to be a bit messy. Meaning that a plant that synthesizes a chemical will tend to also produce a few related but different compounds along with the standard “taste” chemical.
Remember, you can do chemistry in highly controlled environments - 50 psi, 80 C, etc. Nature doesn’t work this way. A banana has to become a banana whether it’s 20 C or 30 C outside.
It’s a bit like the difference between a pure computer tone at 440 hz and playing 440 hz on a saxophone. Sure, they’re “the same”, but the sax has under and over tones that give it its tonal quality.
Vanillin is the main flavor component of vanilla, but not the only one. However when you heat vanilla past 250 degrees or so, most of the other compounds evaporate.
The cost is the main reason why one would use real vs. fake vanilla-- $.19/oz for fake vs. as much as $4.50/oz for real.
Alton Brown recommends the following - if you’re making something where the primary flavor is vanilla, use real vanilla extract (or vanilla beans). If you’re making something where the primary flavor is something else, like chocolate or fruit, use artificial vanilla extract - you’d never be able to pick up the subtle hints of the real extract anyway.
Even if people were willing to pay the extra cost, there’s still a scarcity issue. There simply aren’t enough vanilla beans in the world to supply all the vanilla flavoring that’s used.
Cost and scarcity are related but they’re not interchangeable. There are limits to how far the fingers of the Invisible Hand can stretch.
For example, suppose synthethic vanillin cost five dollars an ounce? Most people prefer to use natural vanilla and it would now be cheaper than artifical vanillin. In an ideal free market, every product would use vanilla.
But in the real world, we’d run out of natural vanilla before the demand ceased and at that point manufacturers would start using the more expensive and less prefered vanillin.
Certainly cost and scarcity are not interchangeable, but the factors that set cost aside from demand are already factored in today’s prices. If demand goes up, the price for vanilla will increase until the customer surplus is exhausted.
