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QUINCES, RATAFIA OF (a French recipe)
Grate ripe quinces till you come to the core, but be careful there are no pips. Let the mass remain for three days in an earthen pan; squeeze it to extract all the juice; measure the juice, and add to it an equal quantity of brandy. Allow six ounces of sugar to each quart of the quince-juice and brandy, with some cinnamon and cloves to taste. Let it infuse for two months, then filter it, and pour it into bottles. This liqueur, when old, is excellent.
A cold-infusion liqueur that asks for almost no technique and a great deal of patience. The work is in the grating and the straining; everything after that is waiting.
- The pips are not a fussy detailQuince seeds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when crushed and steeped. Grate only to the core, discard the core whole, and pick out any stray seed before the pulp goes into the pan.
- Quantities are by ratio, not by weightNo amount of fruit is given. A large batch of ripe quinces, several pounds, will yield only a modest quantity of juice after pressing, since the flesh is dry; whatever you get, match it with an equal volume of brandy. Scale everything from the juice you actually get.
- "A quart" hereCassell's is British, so this is the imperial quart of 40 fl oz, about 1.14 litres. Six ounces of sugar to that is around 170 g per 1.14 L of the combined juice and brandy — the sugar is measured against the mixture, not the juice alone.
- The three-day restGrated quince left standing goes deep russet and begins to ferment slightly at the surface; this softens the pulp and makes it give up its juice. Cover the bowl with a cloth, keep it somewhere cool, and use glass, glazed earthenware or stainless steel rather than bare aluminium or iron, which the fruit acid will attack.
- Getting the juice outQuince pulp is dry and fibrous and will not drip like a berry. Press it hard in a jelly bag, a scalded cloth or a fruit press. Expect cloudy juice — the later filtering deals with that.
- Brandy strengthAn equal volume of 40% brandy brings the finished liqueur to roughly 18-20% alcohol, high enough to keep well for a long time in a sealed bottle. Using a lower-proof spirit or diluting it undercuts the preservation the recipe depends on.
- Spicing"To taste" is unhelpful at the point of infusion, since you cannot taste it yet. A stick of cinnamon and four or five cloves per quart of finished mixture is restrained; more than that and the spice buries the quince, which is the whole point of the drink.
- FilteringAfter two months the liquid will still carry fine pectin haze. Rack it off the sediment first, then pass it through a coffee filter or several layers of muslin. Do not force it; a slow drip gives a clear result.
- Yield and keepingThe finished quantity is roughly double the juice you extracted, since the brandy matches it volume for volume. Bottled and corked, it improves for years — the note that it is 'excellent when old' is accurate, and a year in glass rounds the raw spirit noticeably.
Ratafia is a catch-all French term for a fruit or nut liqueur made by steeping rather than distilling — brandy, sugar, flavouring, time. The word is usually traced to the Latin rata fiat, the phrase used in confirming an agreement, from the custom of sealing a bargain with a glass, though that etymology is traditional rather than settled. Quince ratafia belongs to a large family of domestic French cordials, alongside ratafias of cherry, blackcurrant and walnut, and it made sense in a household economy where quinces ripened all at once, were too hard and astringent to eat raw, and could not be kept long. Cassell's, compiled in late-Victorian Britain, drew freely on French domestic practice and prints the recipe with its origin flagged in the title; quinces were then still a common English garden tree, grown as much for the marmalade and cheese they made as for anything else.