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Ratafia, Blackberry
Take twenty pounds of blackberries, and mash them with the juice of twenty oranges and ten lemons. Pound in a mortar half a pound of bitter almonds, half an ounce of nutmeg, two pods of vanilla, an ounce of coriander-seeds, and four sticks of Jamaica pepper. Put these into the mash-pan with the fruit and a quart of syrup. Let the mass be put into a large well-corked stone bottle, and stand it near the fire for a fortnight. At the end of that time strain off the liquor, and to each quart add one of French brandy. Let it stand another fortnight. Then make it clear by running it as often as necessary through a jelly-bag, and bottle for use.
A Victorian fruit cordial of the ratafia family, and one that cannot be reproduced as written. The reasons are chemical rather than culinary, but the glossary below may still help in reading it.
- The bitter almonds are the problemHalf a pound of pounded bitter almonds, steeped raw in an acidic fruit mash, is the whole objection. Crushing bitter almonds in the presence of moisture lets the enzyme emulsin act on amygdalin and release hydrogen cyanide, and nothing in this method — no boiling, no baking, no distillation — drives it off. The quantity here is far outside any margin of safety; bitter almonds are for this reason not sold for food use in the United States and are restricted elsewhere.
- Two pounds of pressure in a corked stone bottlePressure in a corked stone bottle -- Twenty pounds of ripe blackberries plus a quart of syrup, held warm by the fire for a fortnight under a tight cork, is an uncontrolled fermentation in a sealed vessel. Wild yeasts will produce carbon dioxide with nowhere to go.
- If you want a blackberry ratafiaUse a current recipe from a reputable source, one that flavours with commercial almond extract or apricot kernel flavouring rather than whole bitter almonds, and that ferments or macerates in a vented vessel.
- Jamaica pepperAllspice, the dried berry of Pimenta dioica, not peppercorns and not chilli. Victorian books use the two names interchangeably; "four sticks" is odd phrasing, since allspice was sold as whole dried berries.
- SyrupPlain sugar syrup, sugar boiled with water until clear. The recipe gives no proportions for it.
- Jelly-bagA conical bag of flannel or close-woven cotton, hung and left to drip without squeezing. The recipe's "as often as necessary" means repeated passes through the same bag to clear the cordial.
- ScaleTwenty pounds of blackberries with the juice of thirty citrus fruits is a farmhouse or country-house quantity, and the brandy added afterwards at a quart to the quart doubles the finished volume again.
Ratafias were the domestic liqueurs of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries: fruit, spice and spirit left to marry in a jar, then strained and bottled. Many, though by no means all, took their character from almond, whether from bitter almonds, peach or apricot kernels, or cherry stones, which is why so many ratafia recipes read alarmingly to a modern eye he the the one that carries the risk. The name's origin is disputed; it is often traced to the Latin legal tag rata fiat conventio, "let the agreement be ratified," the drink supposedly being taken to seal a bargain, though a derivation from Creole or Malay terms for a distilled spirit is equally argued. Cassell's, compiling for a late-Victorian household that still preserved its own fruit, prints the formula much as an earlier stillroom book would have done, with no sense that the almonds required comment. The understanding of amygdalin and cyanogenic glycosides was developing through the nineteenth century.