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Ratafia De Framboises

A raspberry and cherry brandy liqueur made by boiling juices with sugar, adding brandy, clarifying, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 De Framboises

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the raspberry and cherry juice with the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add the brandy to the mixture and stir well.

  3. Let the mixture stand until it becomes clear.

  4. Once clear, pour it into bottles for storage.

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. Raspberry + brandytop 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. Cherry + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 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).

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

Raspberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour of the liqueur.
Cherry juice
Adds extra fruit depth and a rounder, slightly tart flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the liqueur and helps dissolve into the juices to balance the brandy.
Brandy
Acts as the spirit base, adding alcohol strength and preserving the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until it becomes clear. Standing lets fine particles from the fruit juices settle out, so the liqueur clears. Rushing this step leaves the finished ratafia cloudy and less stable on the shelf.

Swap the cherry

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

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

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