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Ratafia De Framboises

A raspberry liqueur made by infusing raspberries with brandy, cinnamon, mace, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Ratafia De Framboises

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Pick the raspberries and place them in a jar with the brandy, cinnamon, and mace.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the water and add it to the jar.

  3. Mix well and let it infuse for 15 days, shaking occasionally.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a 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. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,547 recipes

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

Raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour that the spirit takes on during infusion.
Brandy
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the fruit and spice flavours.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the raspberries and the strength of the brandy.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the infused liqueur.

The step that matters

Mix well and let it infuse for 15 days. Alcohol extracts flavour and colour slowly from fruit and spice, and the sugar must fully dissolve first so it mixes evenly. Shaking helps keep the fruit in contact with the liquid, so the infusion turns out consistent rather than uneven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, cinnamon, 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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