Skip to main content
Drink

Ratafia of Raspberries

A raspberry liqueur made by steeping raspberries and cherries, dissolving sugar, adding brandy, clarifying, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raspberry and cherry work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 192 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Ratafia of Raspberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juices

  1. Stew and press raspberries to obtain juice.

  2. Stew and press cherries to obtain juice.

Blend and clarify

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the fruit juices.

  2. Add the brandy to the mixture.

  3. Let the mixture sit until clear.

  4. Pour off the clear liquid, filter it, 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. Raspberry + cherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Brandy + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

  3. Brandy + cherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the drink and carries its aroma.
Raspberry juice
Provides the main flavour and colour of the drink.
Cherry juice
Adds deeper fruit flavour and body to the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the fruit juices.

The step that matters

Let the mixture sit until clear. Adding brandy to juice can leave cloudy particles suspended. Resting lets them settle, so the clear liquid can be poured off cleanly and filtered.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, raspberry, 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesRaspberry ShrubRaspberry Shrub57 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes