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To Make Raſberry Brandy

A homemade raspberry brandy made by steeping raspberries in brandy and water, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sugar 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 ↓

To Make Raſberry Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Steep

  1. Combine the brandy and water in a large mug.

  2. Add the raspberries and sugar, then cover tightly.

  3. Let it sit for one week.

Strain and bottle

  1. After a week, strain the mixture through a piece of flannel covered with Holland cloth.

  2. Rack the liquid into other bottles.

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

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

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

Raspberries
Supply the main fruit flavor, aroma and red color that the alcohol draws out.
Brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor and color from the fruit and keeps the infusion stable.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the raspberries' tartness.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and leave the full week. A tight cover keeps the alcohol from evaporating, so the brandy can keep extracting flavor and color from the fruit over the whole infusion period. Stopping early yields a weaker, paler liquor.

“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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