The Kitchen
Nine recipes, and almost none of them ours.
We are not going to invent dishes to sell you beans. Nearly all of these carry a pedigree you can check: a cookbook from 1691, an island tradition, a Paris dining room in 1981, the classical canon, a centuries-old French thrift, and a legal standard. Where something is modern, we say so on the page. Vanilla is essential to every one of them; in none of them is it decoration.
The dishes
Three with a pedigree you can check: a cookbook from 1691, an island tradition, and a Paris dining room in 1981.
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№ 01
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Crème brûlée à la vanille
The custard was first written down in 1691. The vanilla is the part we are responsible for.
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№ 02
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Canard à la vanille
Réunion's answer to a question Europe never thought to ask: what if vanilla were a spice?
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№ 03
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Homard à la vanille
The dish that made vanilla savoury. Roasted lobster, vanilla beurre blanc, 1981.
The foundations
The techniques the dishes are built on. Learn these and the rest follows.
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№ 04
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Vanilla beurre blanc
Senderens' idea, lifted out of the lobster and put to work on everything else.
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№ 05
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Crème anglaise, and the ice cream it becomes
One custard, two dishes, and the fairest test there is of whether your vanilla is real.
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№ 06
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Vanilla brown butter
Beurre noisette is classical. The vanilla in it is not; it is simply the most useful thing on this page.
The pantry
What you make once and keep. Including what to do with the pod you have already used, and the rub for dry-aged beef.
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№ 07
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Vanilla extract, to the legal standard
Not so much a recipe as an arrangement between you, a jar, and six months.
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№ 08
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Vanilla sugar, and vanilla salt
Nothing is wasted. The spent pod has a second life, and the French have known it for centuries.
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№ 09
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The house rub: vanilla, coffee and cocoa
Coffee and cocoa on beef is proven steakhouse practice. The vanilla is ours, and the chemistry is on our side.
Made with
Grade A Indonesian planifolia.
Every recipe here is written for a real bean: graded, signed, and sold by weight.