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Ratafia, Noyeau
Put into a large jar six ounces of apricot kernels cut into small pieces, with three quarts of brandy; let them infuse for three weeks, shaking or stirring them from time to time. Take out the kernels; dissolve a pound and three-quarters of sugar in a pint of water; mix all together, filter, and bottle it.
This is a bitter-kernel cordial of the old school, and the flavouring agent is the problem. The points below explain why the quantities here put it outside what can be made safely today.
- The kernels are the hazardApricot kernels contain amygdalin, which breaks down into hydrogen cyanide when the kernel tissue is damaged and its own enzymes go to work in the presence of moisture. Cutting them into small pieces, as directed, is precisely the step that starts that reaction.
- Six ounces is far out of rangeSix ounces of kernels is on the order of a hundred or more bitter apricot kernels. Food safety authorities today advise adults against eating more than a very small number of bitter apricot kernels in a day, and the cyanogenic content of raw kernels varies enormously from batch to batch, so there is no way to know what a given jar contains.
- Alcohol extracts it and the filter does not remove itThree weeks of maceration in brandy pulls soluble compounds out of the kernel fragments and into the spirit. Straining out the solids and filtering the finished cordial clarifies it but leaves the extracted material behind. Nothing in the method destroys or removes the toxic component.
- No heating step, and none would helpThere is no cooking of the infusion that might drive off volatile cyanide; the sugar is merely dissolved in water and mixed in. Time and a filter will not separate the flavour from the toxic component.
- Sweetness hides the warningA pound and three-quarters of sugar to three quarts of spirit makes a liqueur pleasant enough to drink in quantity, and the sugar masks bitterness that might otherwise limit how much anyone swallowed.
- What modern noyau is made ofModern almond flavourings, and many commercial nut-kernel liqueurs, rely on benzaldehyde, the aromatic compound responsible for the scent, without the cyanogenic glycoside. If you want this flavour, use a current recipe or a bought liqueur rather than adapting this one.
Ratafia and noyau (spelled noyeau or noyau in English books) were among the common home-made cordials of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Noyau takes its name from the French noyau, a fruit stone, and was flavoured with the kernels of stone fruit; ratafia covered a wider range of flavoured cordials, kernel-based ones among them. The bitter-almond note of peach, apricot and cherry kernels was prized in an era when flavourings were scarce and expensive, and the same taste ran through ratafia biscuits, macaroons and flavoured creams. Some writers of the period cautioned against bitter kernels, but the mechanism was poorly understood and the dose entirely unmeasured, which is why a recipe like this one calls without comment for a quantity no modern kitchen would consider.