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Ratafia, Black Currant
Take twelve pounds of black currants, and mash them in a deep earthen pan. Pound in a mortar half an ounce of cinnamon, three pods of vanilla cut into bits, an ounce of cardamom-seeds, four sticks of Jamaica pepper, two blades of mace, a quarter of a pound of bitter almonds, and six apricot kernels. Add these ingredients to the fruit, together with a quart of syrup. Put the whole into a large stone bottle, and let it stand during a fortnight near the fire. Then strain out all the juice through a linen bag, pressing it well out, and with each quart of the juice mix a quart of the best French brandy. Let it stand another fortnight in the same place. Then run it through a jelly-bag until it is clear, and bottle for use.
This is a cold-infused fruit cordial, and the flavouring is the problem: a quarter of a pound of bitter almonds plus six apricot kernels, steeped for a month in a liquid that is never heated or distilled. The points below explain why the recipe cannot be followed.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the crushed nut meets moisture and its own enzyme. A quarter of a pound, pounded in a mortar and left to macerate for four weeks, is a substantial dose infused directly into a drink. Bitter almonds are not sold for food use in the United States and are restricted elsewhere for exactly this reason.
- Apricot kernelsThe six apricot kernels work the same way and add to the same load. Kernels of apricot, peach and cherry are all cyanogenic, and public health agencies in several countries have issued specific warnings against eating them in quantity.
- Nothing here destroys the cyanideNothing here reliably destroys the cyanide -- There is no boiling, no baking, no distillation. The mixture stands a fortnight near the fire, and warmth favours enzymatic release. Hydrogen cyanide dissolved in the juice will largely pass through the linen bag and the jelly-bag into the bottle.
- The dose is unmeasurableAmygdalin content varies widely between batches of kernels, so there is no way to know the strength of the finished cordial. Bitter-almond aroma is not a reliable guide to how much cyanide is present.
- Sweet almonds are not a fixSubstituting sweet almonds gives none of the characteristic flavour, which is why the recipe calls for bitter ones. If you want a black currant cordial, use a current recipe rather than adapting this one.
- For reference onlyJamaica pepper is allspice; the text's 'four sticks' is obscure, since allspice is a berry rather than a stick, and no confident equivalent can be given. The syrup is presumably a plain sugar syrup. These notes are here to make the text legible, not to enable the recipe.
Ratafia is the general European name for a fruit or kernel cordial made by steeping rather than distilling, and the word is often said to derive from the Latin formula rata fiat, spoken over a drink taken to seal an agreement, though this derivation is traditional rather than settled. Through the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries the defining note of a ratafia was the bitter-almond or fruit-stone flavour, which is why bitter almonds, apricot kernels and peach stones appear so often in these formulas; the same taste survives commercially in amaretto and in the small ratafia biscuit. Cassell's prints the recipe among a run of household cordials at a time when a stone bottle standing near the kitchen fire was ordinary equipment, and the toxicity of kernels had been known to chemists since the isolation of amygdalin in the 1830s.