Agree with you about real vs artificial vanilla. Don't know the answer to your second question.
BTW, our family used to make homemade icecream with a hand-crank machine (full fat, full sugar -- this was the 1970s), and one of my parents (Probably my mom) discovered how to make our own extract, by soaking whole vanilla beans in grand mariner (orange flavored liqueur). The alchohol got used as the extract, and the vanilla beans would get split and scraped for their seeds.
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BTW, our family used to make homemade icecream with a hand-crank machine (full fat, full sugar -- this was the 1970s), and one of my parents (Probably my mom) discovered how to make our own extract, by soaking whole vanilla beans in grand mariner (orange flavored liqueur). The alchohol got used as the extract, and the vanilla beans would get split and scraped for their seeds.
Best vanilla ice cream ever!