Vanilla Sugar

• 750 g caster sugar
• 2 vanilla pods

Fill a vacuum-sealable glass jar with the caster sugar and the vanilla pods, each cut into 3; after a week you will have sugar infused with the sort of domestically heady fragrance that seems as if it could only have come from the most well-stocked and well-ordered of Victorian larders. It’s the aromatic equivalent of well-worn, ambrosially evocative, cream-painted tongue-and-groove panelling.<