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Raspberry Brandy

A homemade raspberry brandy made by steeping raspberries, extracting juice, sweetening, boiling, adding brandy, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raspberry Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick the raspberries when dry.

  2. Place them in a glass jar and submerge the jar in a kettle of cold water.

  3. Heat the kettle until the water is hot and let the fruit sit until the juice runs.

Sweeten and cook

  1. Strain the juice and add ½ pound of sugar for every pint of juice.

  2. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

Finish and bottle

  1. Once cooled, mix in an equal quantity of brandy.

  2. Bottle it tightly.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy 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

Raspberries
Provide the juice and the main fruit flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the fruit's tartness.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the liquid and carries aroma.

The step that matters

Mix in the brandy only after cooling. Alcohol evaporates readily when hot, so adding brandy to boiling juice would drive off much of its aroma and strength. Letting the mixture cool first keeps the spirit's flavour and preserving effect in the finished liqueur.

“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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