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Drink

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 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 385 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

The recipe

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Orange + peachtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together385 recipes

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

  2. Orange + spirittop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together171 recipes

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

  3. Peach + spirittop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together33 recipes

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

  4. Peach + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together2,308 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together19,210 recipes

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

Orange and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 19,210 recipes mention both: they likely 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.

Flavor stand-ins for the peach

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Appleabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Lemonabout as good a flavor fit
  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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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