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RATAFIA (another way)
Blanch and bruise the kernels of three hundred apricots, peaches, and nectarines; put them into a clean stone jar with a pound of white sugar-candy and half a pound of sweet and one ounce of blanched bitter almonds beaten in a stone mortar with orange-flower water; pour on them a gallon of French brandy; cork the jar well, and seal it; let it stand in a warm room two months, shaking the ratafia daily; then store it for twelve months; filter it perfectly clear through two or three thicknesses of muslin, put into small bottles, cork and seal.
This is a stone-fruit kernel cordial, and the flavour it chases comes from exactly the compound that makes it dangerous. The quantities here are far outside anything that could be consumed safely.
- The kernels are the problemApricot, peach and nectarine kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the crushed kernel meets moisture and the fruit's own enzymes. Bruising three hundred of them and steeping them for fourteen months is an efficient method of extracting that cyanide into the spirit.
- Bitter almonds compound itThe ounce of bitter almonds is a second cyanogenic source. Bitter almonds are not sold for eating in the United States and are restricted elsewhere precisely because their amygdalin content is high and variable; sweet almonds are a different cultivar and are not a substitute for the flavour intended here.
- No cooking step reduces the riskSome traditional kernel preparations rely on heat to drive off volatile hydrogen cyanide. Nothing here is heated. The maceration is cold, prolonged, and specifically designed to pull everything out of the kernels and hold it in solution.
- The dose is unknowableKernel toxicity varies enormously by cultivar, ripeness and season, and the recipe gives no weight for the kernels at all, only a count. There is no way to estimate what a small glass of the finished cordial would deliver.
- If you want the flavourThe almond-cherry note of ratafia is available from commercially produced ratafia, amaretto and noyau liqueurs, where the cyanide content is regulated and tested. Use a current recipe or a bought bottle.
- Reading the originalSugar-candy is crystallised sugar, sold in large lumps and broken up before use. Orange-flower water is still made and sold. If the gallon is the Imperial gallon it is a little over four and a half litres; a US gallon would be about 3.8 litres, and the recipe itself does not tell us which is meant.
Ratafia was the general eighteenth- and nineteenth-century name for a sweetened spirit flavoured by cold maceration, and the classic version leaned on the bitter, marzipan-like noyau note of stone-fruit kernels. Cracking the stones left over from preserving and bottling season is often said to have been thrifty household practice: the fruit had already been used, and the kernels were free flavouring. The name is often traced to the Latin rata fiat, a drink taken to seal an agreement, though the etymology is disputed and may equally come from Creole French. Cookery writers of the period were not wholly ignorant of the danger — warnings about bitter almonds and prussic acid appear in medical literature — but the flavour was prized enough that domestic recipes kept calling for kernels by the hundred. The long two-stage rest, two months warm and twelve months cool, reflects a household that could afford to tie up a gallon of French brandy for over a year.