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Orange Ratafia

A liqueur made by infusing orange zest, sugar, brandy, and orange juice.

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

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

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

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

Infuse and bottle

  1. Let the mixture infuse for three days.

  2. Filter the infusion and bottle it 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

Oranges
Supply the zest and juice that give the liqueur its citrus aroma and flavour.
Brandy
Acts as the alcohol base that extracts and holds the orange aroma.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw oil from the orange zest into the mixture.

The step that matters

Rubbing the zest into the sugar. Rubbing the zest into the sugar breaks open its oil glands and spreads the oils over the crystals, so the sugar pulls out more aroma. Grating the zest very finely adds surface area for the brandy to extract flavour.

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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