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Drink

Orange Ratafia

A sweet orange liqueur made by infusing brandy with orange zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,706 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Ratafia

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the zest of three fine Louisiana oranges very finely.

  2. Rub the zest into one pound of powdered sugar in a jar.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Add one pint of good brandy and the juice of the three oranges, removing the seeds.

  2. Let the mixture infuse for three days.

  3. Filter the mixture and 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 + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Brandy
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the orange flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the sharp citrus taste of the drink.
Orange zest
Supplies aromatic oils that give the ratafia its strong orange fragrance.
Orange juice
Adds fresh citrus acidity and extra orange flavour to the infusion.

The step that matters

Rubbing the zest into the sugar. Rubbing the zest into the sugar draws the aromatic oils out of the peel and into the crystals, so the later brandy picks up more flavour. Finely grated zest gives more surface area for this release.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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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