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Ratafia d'Abricots

A sweet apricot liqueur made by infusing apricots, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and brandy.

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 d'Abricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apricots

  1. Break the stones of the apricots and remove the kernels.

  2. Peel and crush the apricots in a mortar.

Infuse

  1. Combine the crushed apricots, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and brandy in a jar.

  2. Seal the jar tightly and let it infuse for three weeks, shaking it often.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a straining bag and bottle it.

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. Apricot + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apricot + clovetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and aroma, and release their sugars and juices into the brandy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the brandy's sharpness and alcohol.
Brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the fruit and preserves the mixture.
Cloves
Contribute warm, spicy aroma to the infusion.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the infusion.

The step that matters

Sealing and shaking during the infusion. A tightly sealed jar keeps alcohol and aromatics from evaporating, while regular shaking spreads sugar and fruit through the brandy so flavour extracts evenly over the three weeks.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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