Well, the food itself you add all these spices to itself has a flavor. If you make everything taste like a mix of all the different spices that becomes a another kind of samey and boring even if you wouldn't use the word "bland" any more. Of course no cuisine does exactly that, but to me, some tend more to one side of that spectrum or the other. There are different ways of striking a balance. Italian is an example of a great cuisine that no one would accuse of being boring which tends toward using a light hand and fewer ingredients at time.

I just love vanilla. I don't find it boring, so usually one of my ice cream scoops is always a nilla.

I agree, that using different spices make sweets richer - and I do have my sweet spot (heh) for raisins soaked in rum. To top off your list with something with a kick :) bourbon and such other liquor works well also.

White people spicy

I assume that people who think it's spicy are getting thay flavor from whatever solvent was used for an extract (eg vodka).

Rookie mistake, got a smear vanilla on the screen.

Most likely it was discovered during the butchering of beavers.

Beaver pelt was a highly valued product on the American frontier for hundreds of years. A whole trade was built around it. And given the circumstances of the first ~200 years of Europeans colonising Northern America, they wouldn't have wasted the rest of the animal just for the pelt - what little meat every beaver had would've been used.

So you're out there, butchering a beaver, grabbing it by the pu... anus, and you notice that even though you washed the carcass, there's some oily residue on your gloves/hand after pressing around the area. It's not something you've seen before, but you know very well how valuable all sorts of animal oils (tallow, pig fat, especially whale blubber) are, so you check it out. First thing you do is smell it... and damn, it smells GOOD. Maybe you've even had a bit of vanilla before as a treat, and recognise the scent being similar. Then you taste it, just a lick... and it's just like that piece of cake you had at the fancy cake shop ages ago as a kid. Or not recognise it but realise it's tasting good.

Either way, you just found a potentially usable resource. Spices and seasonings are still a luxury, so you tell others about it, after all, who wouldn't want to make some extra money on the work they're already doing?

And suddenly people want it. Vanilla is scarce and expensive, people like the flavour, and beavers are plentiful. You extract some oil, take it to the town chemist who checks it, deems it safe to use, and BAM, you have a new revenue stream, all you have to do is 30 minutes of extra work on the beavers you caught - wash the ass, express the anal glands for their oils, collect it up, and sell it by vials.

Most discoveries happen like that. Yes, to us it sounds weird, who the hell goes around licking asses of animals for hidden secrets? But in reality you were just making use of something, and found an extra resource.

People used to eat anything and everything out of desperation. They weren't out to taste anuses specifically. Well, most people weren't. They get to the last part, are still hungry, grimace and put it in their mouth and there's an unexpectedly pleasant (given the circumstances) surprise.

We also have dogs. After enough time with enough people and enough dogs, eventually someone's going to notice their dog being especially excited about eating the part that they'd normally give to it to eat, and so sniff, if not actually taste. Same surprised reaction.

There's also the fact that no person (or dog) must have died from doing this, so other people were less afraid to try it.

Comment mitosis but from different accounts.... how? Unless one of you just copied the other's comment for some reason

Some vanilla extract are also not vanilla but made from cloves. Weird but true. Don't know how they do the chemistry. It was put out in the open by a famous chef a few years back.

What I can vouch for, personally, is making your own vanilla extract at home, using alcohol. Don't recommend vodka but I recognize it is a widely available and usually affordable alcohol; tried it and the end result was disappointing.

To tie into your comment, I'd also consider cream crackers. Eat a couple first to establish a base line for your palate, then put a drop of extract on another and chew slowly