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To Make Ratafia De Cafe

A coffee liqueur made by steeping roasted coffee in proof spirit with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Ratafia De Cafe

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the ground coffee, proof spirit, and sugar in a large container.

  2. Seal the container and let it sit for one week to digest.

  3. After a week, strain the mixture to remove the coffee grounds.

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. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  2. Coffee + spirittop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together31 recipes

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

  3. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Roasted coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma that infuse into the spirit.
Proof spirit
Extracts flavor from the coffee and acts as the alcoholic base of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of the coffee and softens the spirit.

The step that matters

Straining after the week of steeping. Leaving the grounds in too long or straining poorly can pull in bitterness and leave sediment, so the infusion should be strained fully once the flavor has developed.

“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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