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Ratafia, Quince

A sweet quince liqueur made by grating quinces, infusing with brandy, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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, Quince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Grate the quinces until you reach the core, ensuring no seeds are included.

  2. Let the grated quinces sit in an earthen pan for three days.

  3. Squeeze the mixture to extract all the juice.

  4. Measure the juice and add an equal amount of brandy.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Add 6 ounces of sugar for each quart of the mixture, along with cinnamon and cloves to taste.

  2. Allow the mixture to infuse for two months.

  3. Filter the mixture and pour it into bottles.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Quince + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Quince + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Quince + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Ripe quinces
Provide the fruit juice that forms the base of the ratafia.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the liquid and extracts flavour from the fruit and spices.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the fruit's tartness.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Quincethe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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