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Ratafia, Gooseberry
Take five quarts of the finest sound ripe goose-berries, a salt-spoonful of cinnamon, the same of mace, six pounds of pounded lump sugar, and a quarter of a pound of bitter almonds. Place these in two gallons of French brandy. Stop it well, and let it infuse during three months. Then press out the gooseberries, and filter the whole through filtering-paper. Store in pint bottles.
This is a cold-infusion cordial, and the problem is not the method but one ingredient: a quarter of a pound of bitter almonds steeped in drinkable liquid and never heated, cooked off, or otherwise dealt with.
- Bitter almonds are the reason to stopBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which enzymes in the crushed kernel convert to hydrogen cyanide on contact with moisture. A quarter of a pound is roughly 100 kernels; published estimates put the lethal adult dose in the region of 50, and far fewer for a child.
- Nothing in the method removes itThree months of infusion in brandy extracts the kernels' flavour compounds and their cyanogenic glycosides together. Pressing and filtering through paper clarify the liquid and remove solids only; dissolved cyanide passes straight through into the pint bottles.
- No cooking step at allSome old almond preparations were boiled or baked, which drives off much of the hydrogen cyanide. This one is never heated, so little if any of the toxin is driven off, in a spirit that will be drunk in glassfuls.
- The dose is impossible to judgeAmygdalin content varies widely between kernels and seasons, and the finished cordial gives no way to know its concentration. There is no safe serving size to work back to.
- Supply has changedBitter almonds are not sold raw for eating in the United States and are restricted in many other countries, precisely because of the cyanide. Where they appear commercially it is as bitter almond oil or flavouring processed to remove the prussic acid, which is not what this recipe calls for.
- Historical units, for reading onlyA salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon, and pounded lump sugar is simply granulated or caster sugar. Five quarts of gooseberries is roughly 7 lb of fruit against two gallons of brandy.
- If you want a gooseberry cordialUse a current recipe from a reliable modern source rather than adapting this one.
Ratafias were the great domestic liqueurs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: fruit, sugar and spice left to infuse in brandy for weeks or months, then strained, filtered and bottled for the sideboard. The name is generally traced either to the Latin toast rata fiat conventio, "let the agreement be ratified" — such cordials being drunk to seal a bargain — or to tafia, the West Indian cane spirit; neither derivation is settled. Almond kernels, whether bitter almonds or the pounded pits of apricots, cherries and peaches, were a common flavouring, and the characteristic marzipan note they gave is why the word ratafia later attached itself to almond biscuits and almond essence in English baking. Gooseberries were an obvious base in Britain, where they grew in every kitchen garden and ripened in quantity in a short summer window; a two-gallon jar of brandy was one way to keep the glut through winter. The recipe is printed at a moment when such household infusing was still ordinary practice, and long before the sale of bitter almonds was regulated.