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Ratafia, Raspberry

A clear raspberry liqueur made by dissolving sugar in raspberry and cherry juice, then adding brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and cherry work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 192 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Ratafia, Raspberry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the raspberry juice and cherry juice.

  2. Add the brandy and mix well.

  3. Let the mixture stand until it is clear.

  4. Bottle the clear liquor.

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. Raspberry + cherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Raspberry + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

  3. Cherry + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and brandy 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

Sugar
Sweetens the liquor and softens the sharp edge of the brandy.
Raspberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and the characteristic colour.
Cherry juice
Adds a complementary fruit flavour and extra body to the raspberry.
Brandy
Serves as the spirit base that carries the fruit aromas and helps preserve the liquor.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until it is clear. Sugar and fruit solids take time to settle out of the spirit. Bottling too early leaves haze and sediment that cloud the finished liquor.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raspberry, brandy. 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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