What makes Elato’s vanilla so different?
There are eight types of vanilla used by manufacturers of vanilla ice cream listed below in order of cost:
1. Synthetic vanilla flavour - uses artificial flavour and colour, often called vanilla essence
2. Natural vanilla flavour – a combination of aromatic flavours from nature that taste like vanilla. Some natural vanilla's can contain real vanilla extract but this isn't common.
3. Vanilla paste – Contains vanilla extract as well as a selection of ground pods, seeds and/or vanilla flavour usually in a glycerol plus sugar base.
4. Spent seed – seed leftover after infusing to make vanilla extract. It has very little flavour. Used mostly for colour.
5. Manufacturers seed – contains a mixture of spent seed and fresh seeds
6. Ground seed pod – outside pods from the seeds are dried and ground for flavour
7. Vanilla extract – Pure vanilla flavour extracted by infusion from vanilla seeds and pods into either alcohol or glycerol for at least a month. Elato uses vanilla extract with an alcohol base.
8. Fresh seeds extracted by hand from pods.
FYI, vanilla seeds are also known as vanilla caviar.
This long list allows for many combinations of vanilla ingredients in ice cream.
The table below shows each of the vanilla’s used by the brands listed in the Good Food article.

You will notice that Elato uses four different vanillas, but we call our vanilla a Triple Vanilla. That’s because I don’t think vanilla flavour is a type of vanilla. So, I don’t count it as a vanilla, but we still need to list it in our ingredients.
If you agree that vanilla flavour isn’t really vanilla, then there are some brands listed below that aren’t really vanilla. Manufacturers use vanilla flavour to keep costs down and not pass them onto consumers.
Another way costs are minimised is by using spent seeds. After their removal from vanilla extract, spent seeds have very little flavour and are just used for colour. They also don’t require cooking to remove the risk of bacteria, which saves time and cost.
For Elato, I aimed to create a vanilla experience that was better than in a restaurant. This meant using real vanilla seeds from pods plus ground vanilla pods in my ice cream. It also meant these ingredients needed to be cooked to remove the risk of any bacteria. As a result, with heat and our overnight infusion, we get great flavour as well as a change in the colour of our ice cream from white to off white. It’s this change in colour that tells you that other brands haven’t infused their ice cream with vanilla.
That is how you know you are eating a real vanilla ice cream – it isn’t white!