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Ratafia De Raisins

A grape-based liqueur made by infusing grape juice, sugar, brandy, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,164 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Ratafia De Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick fine muscadine grapes off the stalks.

  2. Bruise and press the grapes to extract all their juice.

Make the ratafia

  1. Melt the sugar in the grape juice.

  2. Add brandy and a little cinnamon.

  3. Let the mixture infuse for two weeks.

  4. Strain through a filtering bag and bottle.

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. Grape + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Grape + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together711 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

Grape juice
Provides the fruit base and most of the liquid for the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the alcohol.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the mixture and carries the flavour.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, 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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