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Ratafia De Cassis

A blackcurrant liqueur made by macerating currants with spices and spirit, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Ratafia De Cassis

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine black currants, cloves, cinnamon, proof spirit, and sugar in a large container.

  2. Seal the container and let it digest for two weeks.

  3. Strain the mixture and bottle the liquid.

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. Black currant + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Black currant + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + spirittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Black currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and aroma that define the ratafia.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity and alcohol bite of the spirit.
Proof spirit
Extracts flavour and colour from the fruit and acts as the preserving base.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, 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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