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Angelica Ratafia

A sweet liqueur made by infusing angelica seeds and roots with brandy, cloves, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Angelica Ratafia

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the angelica seeds and roots coarsely.

Make the ratafia

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water and add it to the mixture.

  2. Infuse the mixture in the brandy for a month.

  3. Strain it through a bag and filter it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Angelica + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Angelica + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together84 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Angelica seeds
Release aromatic oils and bitter flavour into the brandy during infusion.
Angelica roots
Add aromatic, earthy flavour compounds to the infused brandy.
Brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the botanicals and preserves the liqueur.
Sugar
Sweetens the liqueur and balances the bitterness of the botanicals.

The step that matters

Infuse the mixture in the brandy for a month. Alcohol slowly extracts flavour compounds from coarsely pounded plant material over time. Too short an infusion leaves the liqueur weak and underdeveloped, while the coarse pounding increases surface area so extraction proceeds more evenly.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, clove, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, clove, cinnamon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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