Skip to main content
Drink

Raspberry Brandy

A fermented spirit made by steeping raspberries in sweet wine and sugar, then aging for six months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Raspberry Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Steep

  1. Combine raspberries, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and orange peel in a cask.

  2. Add sweet wine and let the mixture sit for six months.

Bottle and serve

  1. After six months, bottle the brandy.

  2. Optionally, preserve a few whole cherries in a bottle of brandy for serving.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

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

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

Raspberries
Supply the main fruit flavour and colour to the brandy.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw juice out of the fruit.
Sweet wine
Forms the liquid base that carries the fruit and spice flavours.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice notes to the finished brandy.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture sit for six months. The long steep gives the fruit, spices and peel time to release their flavours slowly into the alcohol. Bottling early leaves the brandy tasting harsh and unbalanced.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, cinnamon, clove. 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.

You might also like

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes