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Ratafia De Fleurs D'orange

A liqueur made by infusing orange flowers in brandy, sweetened with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Ratafia De Fleurs D'orange

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Infuse the orange flowers in the brandy for four days.

Make the sugar syrup and combine

  1. Melt the sugar in the water.

  2. Add the sugar mixture to the infused brandy.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain and filter the ratafia before bottling.

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

Orange flowers
Provide the main floral orange aroma as their flavour slowly passes into the alcohol.
Brandy
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the orange flower flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the strong alcohol and floral notes.

The step that matters

Infuse the orange flowers in the brandy for four days. Flavour is extracted slowly from plant material into alcohol, so the full infusion time is needed to develop a strong, well-rounded orange flower aroma. Cutting the time short gives a weak, thin result.

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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