Name: Ratafia De Genie Vre
Ingredients: ¼ peck (about 9.5 cups) juniper berries; 4 quarts brandy; 1½ pounds sugar

Why it works: Brandy and sugar 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 ↓

Ratafia De Genie Vre

Ingredients

¼ peck (about 9.5 cups) juniper berries
4 quarts brandy
1½ pounds sugar

Directions

Infuse the juniper berries in the brandy with the sugar for 15 days.
Filter the infusion.
Bottle the mixture 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.

Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 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

Juniper berries: Provide the main aromatic flavour that defines the liqueur.
Brandy: Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the juniper flavour.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and rounds out the bitter, resinous notes of the juniper.

“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.