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Ratafia D'angelique

A sweet liqueur made by infusing angelica leaves in brandy, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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'angelique

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Combine the angelica strips, brandy, and water in a large container.

  2. Add sugar, cloves, and cinnamon to the mixture.

  3. Let the mixture infuse for six weeks.

Strain and bottle

  1. After six weeks, pour off the liquid and filter it.

  2. Bottle the filtered liquid 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Angelica + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Angelica + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together84 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Angelica leaves
Supply the main herbal flavour and aroma that the liquor takes on during infusion.
Brandy
Acts as the solvent that draws flavour and aroma out of the leaves over the long infusion.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and a fuller, rounder body that balances the strong herbal notes.
Cloves
Add warm, pungent spice aroma to the finished liquor.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma that rounds out the herbal flavour.

The step that matters

Leaving the mixture to infuse for six weeks. Alcohol extracts flavour slowly, so the full six weeks lets the aroma develop. Leaving plant material soaking far longer than planned can draw out harsher, more bitter notes, so the timing shapes the final taste.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

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