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RASPBERRY BRANDY (another way)
Gather the fruit in fine weather, and pick it nicely; measure it, and put it into a clean stone jar, fix in the bung, tie leather over it, and set it in a saucepan of hot water on the fire, or on a hot hearth, to boil till the juice is all extracted. Strain off the liquor through a fine sieve, and add for each quart of fruit one pound of best loaf sugar roughly broken; boil it ten minutes, skimming all the time. When cold, measure the syrup, and adding to it the same quantity of French brandy, mix them well ten minutes at least. Then filter it clear; fill half-pint bottles, corking and sealing them, and keep the liqueur twelve months.
A cordial rather than anything distilled: the brandy is bought, and the work is in extracting clean raspberry juice and marrying it to syrup. Two details decide the result — a genuinely clear filtration and the full year in bottle.
- Do not seal the jar in the water bathThe original bungs and ties the jar shut before setting it in boiling water, which is how stoneware cracks and lids fly. Use a heatproof jar or bowl covered loosely, or simply set the fruit in a covered basin over simmering water, so steam can escape.
- Measuring by volume"Each quart of fruit" means the picked berries measured loose in a quart measure, roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of raspberries, not a quart of extracted juice. The sugar is matched to the fruit, then the brandy is matched to the finished syrup by volume.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane sold in a cone and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent; do not substitute unrefined or brown sugar, which will muddy both colour and flavour.
- The ten-minute boilTen minutes with constant skimming is about clarity, not thickness: you are lifting the scum that rises to the surface. Skim right through the ten minutes the recipe gives; boiling longer than that only thickens the syrup and dulls the fruit.
- Cool before adding spiritThe recipe is explicit that the syrup must be cold before the brandy goes in. Let it come fully to room temperature, then stir the two together for the full ten minutes the recipe asks, so they are thoroughly combined.
- FilteringCoffee filter paper or a double muslin in a funnel does the work of the old flannel jelly bag. It is slow, and squeezing it will push fine pulp through and cloud the bottle, so let it drip.
- French brandyAny decent unflavoured grape brandy at around 40% alcohol suits. The finished liqueur lands somewhere near 20%, which with the sugar should keep it sound for years in a well-corked bottle.
- Yield and keepingTwo pounds of raspberries with sugar and matching brandy will fill several half-pint bottles. The twelve months appears to be for mellowing rather than safety. Store upright, cool and dark.
Fruit brandies of this kind sat alongside ratafias, shrubs and cherry bounce in the English still-room, where the housekeeper's job included putting up the summer's fruit in forms that would keep. They were sipped in small glasses after dinner, offered to callers, and dosed out for colds and stomach complaints, the medicinal excuse being an old and durable one. The recipe's title, marking it as another way, indicates that more than one version was in circulation, and the method evidently varied by household: some steeped whole berries in spirit for weeks, while this version cooks the juice out first and sweetens it separately, which yields a clearer, brighter liqueur and a syrup that could be judged and skimmed before the expensive brandy was committed to it. The insistence on gathering in fine weather is practical rather than sentimental: rain-swollen raspberries carry water into the jar and dilute both flavour and keeping strength.