[Sca-cooks] Re: vanilla

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> item that I'd never seen before. In addition to the vanilla beans and
> extract being sold at highway robbery prices, there was also a bottle
> about the size of a regular aspirin or booboo-profen bottle that held
> vanilla paste. I looked at the ingredients and while I can't remember
> all of them exactly, it did list vanilla and gum tragacanth as major
> ingredients (there were only a few more and none of them seemed odd or
> non-natural, but I'm blanking on what they were).
>
> I'm curious what this vanilla paste would be used for today, obviously,
> but isn't it interesting the ingredients? I wonder if they didn't do
> something like this in preparation of period stuff either in candies or
> pharmaceuticals.

I can tell you what it is used for today-- those who want to use real
vanilla but can't have alcohol-- recovering alcoholics, Mormons, etc. --
use the vanilla paste instead of the familiar tincture.

-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika   jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with
floaties and teach us how to swim." --Linton Weeks, Washington Post 1/13/01.