Traditional gesso [edit].  Gesso , also known glue gesso or Italian gesso is a traditional mix of an animal glue binder (usually rabbit-skin glue), chalk, and white pigment, used to coat rigid surfaces such as wooden painting panels as an absorbent primer coat substrate for painting.esso (. [ËdÊÉsso] ;  chalk , from the Latin: gypsum, from Greek: Î³ÏÏÎ¿Ï) is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these.
In Europe, too, chocolate was always served together with vanilla for more than a century after it arrived from America. Then people began to use sugar instead of vanilla to sweeten chocolate, and vanilla became a flavoring on its own. All the vanilla in the world was grown in Mexico until 1836, when scientists found ways of growing it in other lands. Today, most of the worldâs vanilla comes from Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean.
Real Vanilla is Natural, but Natural Vanilla is Fake. What most gourmands would define as ârealâ and ânaturalâ vanilla flavoring is simple: Vanilla beans steeped in alcohol. But vanillin, the chemical responsible for vanillaâs taste and flavor, is a far more complicated beast. Chemically identical to real vanilla, artificial vanilla can be made from clove oil, pine bark, coal tar, bran, even cow dung. Until fairly recently, the chemical lignin, derived from wood pulp, was the most common way of synthesizing vanillin.