Bottle of vanilla extract with seeds

Vanilla extract containing natural vanilla extract is a fancy baking ingredient because it is made of pure vanilla extracted from dried vanilla beans of the Vanilla Orchid that originated in Mexico. The majority of the plant's world production belongs to the V. planifolia species, aka Bourbon or Madagascar vanilla. Cultivation of vanilla bean is very labor intensive and making the extract is also time consuming. Not to be confused with imitation vanilla or vanilla essence, a significantly cheeper and inferior artificial vanilla flavouring product made with vanillin. Vanilla extract is essential to a lot of dessert recipes. In recent years it has been tested in savoury dishes for gourmet culinary experiences. The taste of vanilla is hard to describe, not unlike a lot of other flavours. The most common flavour of ice cream is vanilla, thus most people consider it to be the "default" flavour. By analogy, the term "vanilla" is sometimes used as a synonym for "plain".