Claire Saffitz

Okay.

Well, thank you for having me on.

I am very excited to be here.

And I am honored to be on the vanilla episode because it is truly one of the great flavors and so unique and special.

And I don't know how the word vanilla got associated with something like bland and boring because it is neither bland nor boring.

So I'm very excited to talk about it.

I think sometimes the word vanilla is like the default flavor.

It's sort of like it doesn't have a flavor, so it gets labeled vanilla maybe because it has a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract in it.

But I do think if you're going to market it as vanilla, it should have a distinct vanilla flavor.

Or maybe you see specks of vanilla bean in it because I kind of want to see the proof a little bit.

If it's a cake, just call it a butter cake if it doesn't have a flavor, in a sense.

Vanilla should not just be the label that it gets to make it sound like it has something in it.

So yeah, if it's being sold to me as a vanilla something, I want to see it, and I want to smell it, and I want to taste it, for sure.

I think it's like you can't define the word with the word.

I don't know.

It is, to me, sort of indescribable if you haven't had it.

It is very aromatic, even a little bit spicy.

But I think it's sort of hard to describe because it's so singular.

It doesn't have a lot in common with a lot of other types of flavors.

But I'm just saying, like, I'm just dancing around the idea of what it actually tastes like, which is to say that it just tastes like vanilla.