Material guide: vanilla extract — 109 suppliers, and the odor field is one word long

About a 4 minute read.

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• Name: vanilla extract, CAS 8047-24-3, 109 suppliers
• Odor family vanilla; the odor field is one word: vanilla
• The flavor field holds seven: vanilla, phenolic, balsamic, woody, spicy, floral, creamy
• No regulatory field, no strength, no longevity, no boiling point, no flash point, no vapour pressure
• Refractive index 1.340–1.390; this database puts ethanol at 1.310–1.360
• Shelf life 6 months; the natural/synthetic field reads plain natural
• The notes field, in one line: the alcoholic solution of macerated Vanilla planifolia

801 of 6,913 odor fields hold a single word

6,913 materials carry an odor field. 801 of them hold a single descriptor with no separator in the field at all, which is 11.6%.

Most are entries nobody looks at. But five of them have more than 50 suppliers:

Material	Suppliers	The entire odor field
vanilla extract	109	vanilla
peppermint oil	88	peppermint
rose specialty	71	rose
(±)-camphor	66	camphoreous
garlic oil	53	garlic

The five share one property: the name of the material is already the smell word. Peppermint oil smells of peppermint, garlic oil smells of garlic, vanilla extract smells of vanilla.

The name has finished the sentence, so whoever filled the fields copied the name into the odor column and stopped. Who wrote the odour field covered where that column comes from; this is its most extreme failure mode. It is not missing data, it is data repeating the name.

The flavor field on the same record holds seven words

The interesting part is one row down on the same record:

• Odor field: vanilla
• Flavor field: vanilla; phenolic; balsamic; woody; spicy; floral; creamy

One word against seven. Same bottle, same record.

The difference is who was filling it in. Vanilla extract is a food-industry product, and whoever wrote this record was describing a flavouring, so the effort went into the flavour column. The odor column got a label.

For anyone blending, that means the information you want is in the next field over. Phenolic, balsamic, woody and spicy are what it actually does in a formula.

Three vanillas, compared field by field

The database holds three "vanillas", and laid side by side they differ sharply:

	Vanilla extract	Vanillin	Ethyl vanillin
Suppliers	109	193	76
Odor field	vanilla	sweet, vanilla, creamy, chocolate, phenolic	sweet, creamy, vanilla, caramellic, root beer
Strength	(empty)	medium, 10% or less	medium, 10% or less
Longevity	(empty)	400 hours	400 hours
Regulatory	(empty)	JECFA, FEMA GRAS, CoE, FLAVIS	the same
Shelf life	6 months	24 months	24 months
Natural/synthetic	natural	natural/synthetic	natural/synthetic

The only genuinely natural one has the emptiest record and the shortest life. The two synthetics have their fields filled.

That is not a coincidence. A single molecule has a CAS number, a purity, a boiling point and a regulatory index entry; everything about it can be measured. A macerate is a mixture of hundreds of things that differs from lot to lot, so there are fewer fields it can honestly fill. A material with no data is the same structural problem.

The refractive index gives away what is in the bottle

This material's refractive index is 1.340 to 1.390. Lined up against others in the database:

Material	Refractive index @20 °C
Ethanol	1.310–1.360
Vanilla extract	1.340–1.390
Ethyl acetate	1.370–1.375
Sweet basil oil	1.480–1.490
Clove bud oil	1.527–1.535
Benzyl benzoate	1.566–1.571

Vanilla extract's range sits almost on top of ethanol and nowhere near any essential oil. Specific gravity 0.950–1.010 says the same thing: that is the order of magnitude of water and alcohol, not of an aromatic oil.

The notes field says it outright: "the alcoholic solution of macerated vanilla planifolia". The refractive index only restates it in numbers. What you are buying is mostly solvent, with the aromatic material dissolved in it as the minority.

The 6-month shelf life follows from the same fact. Among materials with a shelf life on file, 561 say 24 months, 397 say 12 and 186 say 6. It lands in the shortest bracket, because a watery, alcoholic macerate is far more fragile than a pure compound.

Carbon and hydrogen isotopes separate one vanilla from another

In 2014 Hansen and colleagues at the National Food Institute of the Technical University of Denmark used gas chromatography–isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-IRMS) (PMID 25266169), analysing vanilla flavours produced by chemical synthesis (n = 2), fermentation (n = 1), and extracted from two species of the vanilla orchid (n = 79).

The result, as reported: δ¹³C for vanillin extracted from Vanilla planifolia and V. tahitensis was significantly different (t test), and both groups of natural vanillin could be distinguished from vanillin produced otherwise.

They then measured hydrogen isotopes, δ²H. Plotting δ¹³C against δ²H, vanillin extracted from pods grown in adjacent geographic origins grouped together.

So the isotopes deliver two things at once: authenticity and traceability. What a nose cannot settle about a bottle labelled "natural vanilla extract", a mass spectrometer can.

Petroleum, C3 plants, pods

In 2025 Amr and colleagues at Cairo University published a review of vanillin in Food Chemistry (PMID 39612858), working through the quality control approaches, conventional, hyphenated and sensory.

One sentence is worth keeping: the carbon isotope ratio range appears to have potential to identify vanillin originating from biosynthetic (C3 plant), synthetic (petroleum) sources, or vanilla pods.

Three routes, three isotopic fingerprints. It is also why vanilla is one of the most frequently tested categories in food fraud: the price gap between the natural and synthetic versions is large enough to be worth it, and the molecule itself is identical. The only difference is where the carbon atoms came from.

Buying and storing

109 suppliers, but decide what you actually want first:

• This is a solution, not a raw material. There is no standard strength, and one supplier's "single fold" need not mean another's. Ask for the extraction ratio (how many kilograms of pods to how many litres of solvent) and the alcohol content.
• For vanilla character in a formula, vanillin is usually the right answer. It has 400 hours of longevity, a recommended evaluation strength and regulatory index numbers, and it does not bring a load of ethanol into the formula. Reach for the extract when you want the complexity of the pod.
• Shelf life 6 months, shorter once opened. Refrigerate, keep it dark, keep it sealed.
• Verifying authenticity means sending it out. Refractive index and specific gravity tell you how much solvent is in there, but not whether the vanillin inside came from a pod or a refinery. That is a job for GC-IRMS.
• The record carries no regulatory index numbers. For food or cosmetic use, check your local rules and labelling requirements yourself.

→ Vanilla extract in the database: full physical data, 109 suppliers and suggested blends.

What this article does not establish

• "The odor field is one word because the name is already the smell word" is inferred from what those five share, not from any statement by the cataloguer. Most of the 801 single-word entries I have not looked at individually.
• From the refractive index sitting near ethanol I infer that the bulk is solvent. The notes field supports that reading, but I have no compositional analysis of any lot.
• I attribute the 6-month shelf life to the water and alcohol; the database gives no reason.
• Hansen's sample was 82 flavours, of which only 2 were synthetic and 1 fermented. The "can be distinguished" conclusion rests on a small sample on the synthetic side.
• Isotope methods can themselves be worked around, and this article does not deal with that layer.