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Orange Ratafia

A sweet orange liqueur made by infusing orange rind and peach kernels in spirit, then mixing with orange or currant juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 385 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Orange Ratafia

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Pare the external rind of the oranges, avoiding the white skin.

  2. Slice the peach kernels and infuse them in the spirit for a week.

Make the juice mixture

  1. Press out the juice from the oranges or currants and dissolve the sugar in it.

  2. Combine the juice with the infused spirit.

Rest, filter and bottle

  1. Let it stand for two months, then pour off the clear part.

  2. Filter the remaining mixture.

  3. Combine both parts.

  4. Bottle for use.

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. Orange + peachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Orange + spirittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Peach + spirittop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Seville oranges
Provide the juice and aromatic rind that flavour the ratafia.
Peach kernels
Infused in the spirit to add a distinct almond-like aroma.
Rectified spirit or brandy
Extracts flavour from the kernels and preserves the finished liquor.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances the sharpness of the citrus.

The step that matters

Slice the peach kernels and infuse them in the spirit for a week. Kernels must be sliced so that more surface area is exposed, letting the spirit extract their flavour evenly within the set time. Whole kernels extract slowly and unevenly.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, spirit, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, spirit, 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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