Home › The Principles of Cookery › RATAFIA, RED (another way)
RATAFIA, RED (another way)
Mash together in a tub, or pan, three pounds of black cherries, two of ripe red gooseberries, and one of raspberries. Mix with these twenty-four cherry-kernels previously pounded in a mortar with a pint of syrup; put all into a jar, stop it close, and keep it for twelve hours in heat of about ninety degrees, Fahrenheit; then press it through a clean napkin, let it stand twelve hours longer, when add to each quart of juice a pint of good brandy; next day, strain it through a flannel bag till it is quite clear.
This is a cold-infused fruit cordial rather than anything distilled, but its flavouring agent puts it outside what can responsibly be made today.
- The cherry kernelsThe twenty-four pounded kernels are the point of the recipe — they supply the bitter-almond note that defines a ratafia. They are also the problem: cherry stones contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and left wet. Pounding them and steeping them in the juice for twelve hours in a warm, stoppered jar is precisely the condition that liberates it.
- No safe quantity is given or knowableCyanogenic content varies enormously with cherry variety, ripeness and kernel size, so "twenty-four kernels" describes no measurable dose. Neither the twelve-hour warm hold nor the later brandy does anything to destroy it; there is no cooking step in the whole procedure.
- The warm holdTwelve hours of mashed raw fruit at 90F is an incubation temperature. In a stoppered jar it will begin fermenting on its wild yeasts and may pick up other organisms besides, and nothing in the method afterwards heats or pasteurises the juice.
- What the ratio would have beenFor reference only: a pint of brandy to each quart of juice, with a pint of syrup already worked into the mash, puts the finished cordial somewhere in the region of 10 to 13 per cent alcohol — sweet, low-proof, meant to be drunk in small glasses.
- If you want the flavourThe bitter-almond character here is what commercial noyau and amaretto-style liqueurs are formulated to give safely. Use a current recipe from a modern source rather than adapting this one.
Ratafia was the general European name for a sweetened spirit infused with fruit, kernels or spices, drunk as a digestif and offered to callers; the word is often traced to the Latin formula rata fiat, said to have been pronounced over a glass when an agreement was ratified, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented. What made a drink specifically a ratafia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was usually the kernel — apricot, peach or cherry stones pounded to give the bitter-almond flavour that cooks of the period prized in creams, biscuits and cordials alike. The little almond-flavoured macaroons still called ratafia biscuits take their name from the same taste. The book gives several versions of the drink, red and white, and recipes of this kind persisted in print long after the chemistry of prussic acid in crushed stone-fruit kernels was described.