Vanilla with a cinnamon taste?

[kayb]

Is anyone out there familiar with Danncy vanilla extract? I bought some of their clear vanilla extract recently, and I've noticed it has a distinct taste and smell of cinnamon about it. I think this is the first vanilla extract I've ever bought that is produced/bottled in Mexico. Generally I don't mind a bit of cinnamon, but there are baked products where I just don't want that flavor introduced at all.

 

The website is little help; it's mostly a vehicle for ordering the product.

 

Any insight out there? Mostly, I'm just curious.

 

 

[CatPoet]

It says with big letters that it doesnt contain coumarin, which is part of the flavouring in tonka beans and cinnamon, to me this is odd.  Proper vanilla doesn't contain coumarin  so why do they have that on the bottle?

[Darienne]

Went to Snopes, my favorite site for urban legends...and yes, some cheap Mexican vanilla does contain coumarin which is definitely not something you want to put into your system unknowingly.

 

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/vanilla.asp

[Shel_B]

Did you read the ingredient list before you bought it?  It contains a lot of junk that's not found in good vanilla extract. A decent vanilla extract should contain only vanilla beans, alcohol, and water.

[btbyrd]

I would have thought that vanilla extract which included artificial flavoring as an ingredient (and indeed, more artificial flavoring than vanilla) couldn't be labeled "Pure Vanilla Extract." 

[kayb]

Honestly, I didn't read the ingredient list. I saw pure vanilla extract, and it was at the specialty store where I buy a lot of my spices and so forth, so I went ahead and grabbed it. (It was $8.65 for a 355-ml bottle, which I thought was in line for what vanilla extract ought to cost in the grocery), and it was the only brand they had, although they did have both the brown and the clear. I figured it'd be better, all things being equal, to have the clear, so it wouldn't discolor the rare things that I bake with egg whites only and no other colorant. 

 

Like btbyrd, I figured if it said "pure vanilla extract," that's what it meant. My bad. Guess I'll wind up chunking this and back to the grocery store to get vanilla!

[andiesenji]

I don't have anything recent but this company has been cited in the past and imports seized by the FDA for  failure to list the actual ingredients in products intended for human consumption.

 

My Mexican neighbor said that she would not buy any product from this company for various reasons, including phony ingredients and also because the company has bad employment practices - although she would not elaborate.

 

Here is a notice from 2009  scroll down to the Mexico listings.

[kayb]

Well, looks like that one's getting dumped sooner rather than later. Thanks, Andiesenji.

[Lisa Shock]

You know, you can get cheap, B-grade (short, oddly shaped but tasty) beans on eBay and use them to make gallons of your own extract. I've still got a large (several half-pounds of various types) stash of beans (vacuum sealed, in a cool dark cupboard) from a couple of years ago and several quart jars of extract. -Even after giving away many fancy pint jars of it as gifts.