Vanillon ✦ ◆

Vanillon

What it is

Short, wide and thick enough that the Caribbean calls it banana vanilla, the pompona pod is a third commercial species — barely any vanillin, and a nose of cut hay, tobacco leaf and dried cherry instead. It has all but vanished from Basse-Terre, where a grower may cure a few dozen pods in a year.

In the kitchen

Do not use it where you would use Bourbon: with so little vanillin it reads as thin in a custard. Infuse it a week or more in rum, syrup or a macerating alcohol, where the hay and tobacco have room to come out.

Goes with

Dark rum Rhum agricole Coffee Dark chocolate Pineapple Banana

Same species

Vanilla

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