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Ratafia, Orange-Flower
For each quart of brandy take three ounces of picked orange-flowers and half a pound of fine pounded sugar; put into a jar a layer of sugar and a layer of flowers alternately, let the last be sugar, covering the final layer of flowers well and more thickly than the others; cover the jar close; let it stand to infuse for twelve hours, but not longer, in the cellar; at the end of that time, pour the brandy over, and filter, then bottle the ratafia.
A cold infusion liqueur: no cooking, no heat, and only three ingredients, which puts all the weight on the flowers themselves and on the twelve-hour limit.
- The twelve hours are the hingeThe recipe says "but not longer", so treat it as a hard stop rather than a suggestion. The usual explanation offered is that orange blossom gives up its perfume quickly and that longer contact with bruised petals and any green matter coarsens the flavour, though the recipe itself gives no reason.
- Imperial measuresCassell's is a British book, so a quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.14 litres. Three ounces of flowers is about 85 g and half a pound of sugar about 225 g.
- "Picked" flowersMost likely means the blossom picked over and free of stems, green parts and insects. Three ounces is a large quantity of loose flowers.
- Sourcing the blossomTraditionally the bitter or Seville orange, whose flowers are the most fragrant. Use only blossom from a tree you know to be unsprayed; florist and nursery material is routinely treated with systemic pesticides and is not food.
- If you have no fresh blossomOrange-flower water is the usual modern stand-in, but it is a distillate and behaves nothing like the maceration described here. There is no reliable conversion, so treat any substitution as a different drink rather than this one.
- The cellarA cool, dark place at roughly 10-15C. Warmth speeds the extraction and pushes it past the point the recipe is aiming at, so a refrigerator is closer to the intent than a kitchen counter.
- Layering and the sugarThe dry layers only draw moisture and scent from the petals during the standing; the sugar dissolves once the brandy goes in. Expect to stir or leave it a day for the sugar to go fully into solution before filtering.
- FilteringStrain first through muslin to remove the petals, then through a paper filter for clarity. Sweetened spirit runs slowly, so allow several hours and do not press the solids, which clouds the result.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1.2 litres of a moderately sweet cordial; starting from brandy at around 40 per cent, the sugar dilution brings it to roughly 35 per cent. Bottled and kept dark it holds for a year or more, though the floral top note fades within a few months.
Ratafia is the general European name for a domestic cordial made by steeping fruit, kernels, spices or flowers in spirit and sweetening the result, common in French and Italian households from the seventeenth century and thoroughly naturalised in British kitchens by the nineteenth. The name's origin is disputed; it is often traced to the Latin rata fiat, the toast drunk when an agreement was ratified, though this is traditional rather than documented. Orange blossom was among the most prized of the flower flavourings, associated with the bitter orange of the Mediterranean and with neroli, its distilled essence; a bottle of orange-flower water was standard in a Victorian store cupboard for cakes, creams and custards. That Cassell's includes it at all reflects a period when a well-run house still made its own cordials, and when a spirit infusion was one of the few ways to hold a scent through the year.