Home › The Principles of Cookery › Raspberry Liqueur
Raspberry Liqueur
Put a pint of freshly-gathered ripe raspberries into a spirit jar, with a quart of genuine spirit of any kind. Cork closely, and leave it for a month. Boil a pound of sugar in a pint and a half of water till it is clear syrup. Filter the spirit through a fine hair sieve into a basin, mix it with the syrup, and bottle for use. Time, one month. Sufficient for two quarts of liqueur.
A cold-infusion cordial of the simplest kind: fruit, spirit, time, then sugar. Nothing is cooked but the syrup, so the quality of the two main ingredients is the whole recipe.
- "Genuine spirit""Genuine spirit" most likely warns against the adulterated, watered and doctored spirit sold cheaply at the time. Read it as a clean spirit at full strength — the recipe allows "spirit of any kind", so brandy, vodka or a plain grain spirit all fit. A higher-proof spirit will tend to extract faster.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pints and quarts are imperial: a pint is 20 fl oz (about 2.5 US cups) and a quart 40 fl oz (about 5 US cups). Scaled to US measures, use roughly 5 cups of spirit to 2.5 cups of raspberries.
- A pint of raspberriesFruit is measured by volume here, not weight. An imperial pint of whole berries works out at roughly 12–14 oz / 350–400 g, or about two standard punnets.
- The month is negotiableMuch of the colour and flavour is generally drawn out within the first week or two. Longer steeping does no harm, though the bright red tends to dull towards brown over time, especially in a clear jar left in daylight. Keep it dark and cool.
- FilteringA fine hair sieve was horsehair mesh. Strain through a fine sieve first, then through muslin or a paper coffee filter; raspberry pulp clouds the finished bottle and settles as sediment. Do not press the fruit, which pushes solids through.
- The syrupA pound of sugar boiled in a pint and a half of water gives a thin syrup — about 2¼ cups sugar to 3½ cups water in US terms. Boil only until it runs clear, then cool before mixing with the spirit.
- Strength of the resultYou are adding roughly as much syrup as spirit, so the finished liqueur lands near half the strength of what you started with: about 20% ABV from a 40% spirit. If you want it stronger, reduce the water rather than the sugar.
- Yield and keepingTwo imperial quarts, about 2.3 litres. Sugar and alcohol both preserve it; sealed bottles keep for a year or more, though the colour fades. Serve in small glasses, chilled, or over ice with soda.
Fruit cordials of this type — sometimes called ratafias, or simply raspberry brandy — were a fixture of English household stillrooms long before Cassell's set them in print, and the method barely changed for two centuries: steep ripe fruit in spirit, strain, sweeten, bottle. The insistence on "genuine spirit" is of its moment. Nineteenth-century retail spirits were routinely diluted and doctored, and a domestic cook who wanted a reliable result was advised to buy from a source she trusted. Nothing here is distilled — the spirit is bought ready-made and merely flavoured.