Hairy Beaver Bum Gravy Good For Cakes Says Sweden!

I imagine that MW readers are Bake Off Fans so I have compiled this short factoid.

The beaver population was wiped out in Sweden in the 19th century due to the popularity of castoreum which was then used in natural medicines. Unperturbed, Sweden imported new beavers from Norway and now has about 100,000 of the things busily doing whatever it is that beavers do....

.....one such thing they do is secrete the aforementioned castoreum from glands around their hairy little beaver bums. Rumors about castoreum have  recently been swirling around the interwebs like Charybdis' maw itself so now the Swedish National Food Agency has confirmed that Castoreum is indeed used to provide a taste similar to vanilla in baked goods and sweets.

Also, it is one of those helpfully, umbrella labelled "natural flavourings" you may have seen on the side of packets.


A Beaver plotting to make your ice cream just a little bit off putting
On the upside, this method of Vanilla extraction is "generally recognised as safe" by the US authorities, so no danger of contracting the terrible cartoon disease, "Beaver Fever" which was made famous by my favourite episode of Ren and Stimpy.