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Brandy, Raspberry
Take four pounds of raspberries and steep them in three quarts of brandy for one month; add syrup to taste, and flavour with cinnamon and clove mixture. Some persons prefer it without any flavouring ingredients, but it is always better to have a little added.
An infusion rather than a cooked preparation: the only real work is choosing the jar and being patient. The proportions are generous by modern standards and scale down cleanly.
- Scale and yieldFour pounds of raspberries in three quarts of brandy (imperial measure, so roughly 3.4 litres) makes a large batch that needs a crock or jar of a gallon and a half or more to allow headspace. A quarter batch — 1 lb fruit to around 850 ml brandy — fits a wide-mouth jar and yields something close to a litre once syrup is added.
- The vesselUse glass or glazed stoneware with a tight lid, never bare metal; the fruit acid will pick up a taste from aluminium or unlined steel over a month. Keep the fruit submerged, as any berries riding above the spirit will mould.
- Which brandyThe recipe says only "brandy." A plain grape brandy works best here; anything much weaker will struggle to preserve four pounds of wet fruit for a month, and a heavily oaked cognac fights the raspberry.
- "Syrup to taste"A rich syrup of two parts sugar to one of water, cooled before it goes in, is a reasonable choice. Add it after straining, a little at a time; 150-250 ml per litre suits most palates.
- Cinnamon and clove mixtureThe phrase suggests a pre-made spice preparation of the kind sometimes kept as a tincture — bruised cinnamon and cloves steeped in spirit and strained — which could be added by the drop without murkiness. A short strip of cinnamon bark and two or three cloves dropped into the jar for the last week does much the same job and is easier to control.
- Steeping timeA month is the figure the recipe gives, though much of the colour and flavour will be out of the fruit well before that. If you prefer a lighter result, taste at a fortnight and strain when it pleases you.
- StrainingLift the fruit out with a slotted spoon, then pass the liquid through muslin without pressing the pulp; squeezing forces through fine solids that will never settle. A second racking off the sediment a week later gives a clear bottle.
- Keeping and servingBottled full and corked, it holds for years, though the bright colour fades toward brick after the first twelve months. Serve in small glasses after dinner, or use it as the sweetening element in a cocktail in place of a raspberry liqueur.
Fruit brandies of this kind were a familiar presence in the well-run English larder in the nineteenth century, alongside sloe gin, cherry brandy and elderflower wine, and they occupied an ambiguous place between the drinks cupboard and the medicine chest — cordials were commonly given for chills and stomach complaints as much as for pleasure. The method is older than the book: steeping fruit in spirit rather than fermenting it preserves the fresh flavour of the raspberry, which is fugitive and does not survive cooking well, and it was the domestic answer to a glut of soft fruit in a house with no ice. That the compiler feels obliged to argue for the spice — "it is always better to have a little added" — is a reminder that these books were written into an ongoing household argument, not handed down from nowhere.