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Black-Currant Ratafia Liqueur

A liqueur made by macerating black currants in brandy, then sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and cinnamon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Black-Currant Ratafia Liqueur

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Crush the black currants and place them in a jar.

  2. Pour the brandy over the crushed currants.

  3. Add lemon zest, cinnamon, and a few leaves of the fruit.

  4. Cover the jar with a piece of bladder and place it in the sun for 5-6 weeks.

Finish and bottle

  1. After the time has passed, drain and filter the liquor.

  2. Mix in the crushed loaf sugar and let it stand until dissolved.

  3. Bottle the mixture and cork it securely.

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. Black currant + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Black currant + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 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).

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

Black currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour that the brandy extracts over the long infusion.
Brandy
Acts as the solvent that pulls flavour and aroma from the fruit and preserves the mixture.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the fruit and alcohol.

The step that matters

Sealing the infusion in the sun for 5-6 weeks. Alcohol extracts flavour slowly, so the jar needs the full steeping time with a covering that keeps out air and debris. Stopping early leaves the liquor weak and underdeveloped.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against black currant, 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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