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Ratafia, Raspberry
Dissolve first two pounds of sugar in a pound and a quarter of raspberry juice and a quarter of a pound of cherry-juice, then add four quarts of brandy. Let the liquor stand, and when it is quite clear bottle it.
A cordial rather than a cooked dish: sweetened fruit juice let down with a great deal of brandy and left to fall bright. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions are worth reading closely before you buy spirits.
- Dissolve the sugar first, and in the juiceThis is the hinge. Sugar dissolves readily in water-based juice and very poorly in 40% spirit, so stir the two pounds into the juice until the grain is entirely gone before the brandy goes anywhere near it. Gentle warming helps; do not boil, or you cook the fresh raspberry flavour out.
- Juice measured by weightA pound and a quarter of raspberry juice is roughly 2½ cups, and a quarter pound of cherry juice about ½ cup, since juice weighs close to water. Two pounds of sugar is about 4½ cups granulated.
- The scale of itFour quarts of brandy is a gallon — better than five standard 750 ml bottles — and the finished yield is around five and a half quarts. Quartering the recipe gives a manageable litre and a third.
- The cherry juice mattersSour cherries (morello or amarena) are the likely intent here; sweet dessert cherries will not give the same edge against the sugar. Bottled unsweetened Montmorency juice is a fair substitute, and if you use it, taste before adding all the sugar.
- Brandy gradeDo not use anything you would sip neat. A plain young cognac, armagnac or an unaged grape brandy is right; the fruit and sugar bury oak and cask character entirely.
- "Let the liquor stand"Reckon on four to six weeks in a covered jar in a cool dark place. Pectin and fruit solids drop slowly; siphon the clear liquor off the sediment rather than pouring, or pass it through a coffee filter, which is tedious but gives a jewel-clear result.
- KeepingAt roughly a third alcohol by volume plus heavy sugar, this is self-preserving and needs no processing. Corked or capped in clean bottles it will hold for years, though the raspberry colour fades toward garnet after the first one.
Ratafia was the general eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English name for a sweetened spirit flavoured by infusion rather than distillation, and household books of the period carry a whole clutch of them. The name is usually traced to the practice of sealing an agreement with a glass, the drink taken at the ratification, though that etymology is traditional rather than documented and rival derivations exist. Confusingly, ratafia also came to mean an almond flavouring and the small almond biscuits sold under that name, because the classic French ratafias drew their bitter-almond note from cherry and apricot kernels steeped with the fruit. This raspberry version needs none of that: it belongs to the late-summer end of the still-room year, when a household with canes in the garden had more fruit than it could eat and a bottle of brandy was the most reliable way to keep the taste of it until Christmas.