Skip to main content
Drink

Ratafia d’Anis

A sweet anise‑flavored liqueur made by infusing aniseed in sugar syrup and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ratafia d’Anis

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 2 pounds of sugar with ½ cup of water in a preserving pan until clear and well skimmed.

  2. Boil another ½ cup of water and add 3 ounces of aniseed; let it infuse for 15 minutes.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Combine the infused aniseed water with the sugar syrup and 3 pints of brandy.

  2. Stir well and transfer to a jar, sealing it tightly.

  3. Let it infuse in the sun for 3 weeks.

  4. Strain through a napkin or filtering cloth and bottle 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. 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup to provide sweetness and body to the finished liqueur.
Aniseed
Releases its aromatic oils into the liquid, giving the ratafia its characteristic anise flavour.
Brandy
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the aniseed flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming the sugar syrup. Boiling sugar and water until clear and skimming off foam removes impurities that would otherwise cloud the liqueur and spoil its clarity.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes