“Natural vanilla extract is obtained by steeping vanilla beans in alcohol to afford a solution of vanillin and other minor components that may be used in cooking and baking. While as many as 250 taste and aroma components have been detected in vanilla extract, most of these are destroyed upon exposure to elevated temperature, causing the complexity of the vanilla flavor to diminish upon baking. Furthermore, vanilla beans can only be obtained from hand-pollinated flowering orchids in a handful of tropical areas, making them precious commodities, especially given the vast demand for vanilla worldwide.
The bulk of vanilla substitutes are actually nature-identical vanillin and vanillin derivatives synthesized on multi-ton scale from guaiacol or lignin extracts, which can be isolated from wood pulp. In addition to providing an inexpensive source of vanillin—in higher purity than one could obtain from natural vanilla extract—this synthesis enables production of vanillin derivatives possessing desirable qualities, like increased flavor potency and thermal stability. For example adding one extra carbon atom to vanillin affords ethyl vanillin, which is 2–4 times more flavorful than vanillin itself. Due to this desirable property and its long-standing status on the GRAS list, ethyl vanillin has been used in some vanilla flavoring since the 1930s. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that in blind taste-tests, tasters preferred the artificial vanilla flavoring (including industrially produced vanillin and its analogues) in treats like cookies that must be baked at the high temperatures that cause many of the minor components of natural vanilla extract to decompose.”
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