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Ratafia, Rose
Take a quarter of a pound of roses from which all the green has been picked, pour a pint of warm water over them, let them stand two days; strain them through linen, squeeze them to extract all the liquor; take as much brandy as you have decoction of roses, add half a pound of sugar to each quart, flavour it with a little coriander and cinnamon; let it remain fifteen days, then filter and bottle it.
A cold-infusion cordial in two stages: an aqueous rose decoction first, then an equal volume of brandy with sugar and spice. Nothing is heated, so the whole thing hinges on the quality of the petals.
- The petals are the recipeA quarter pound is a large quantity of loose petals, perhaps four to six quarts depending on how they pack, and strongly scented old garden roses (damask, gallica, rugosa) are the traditional choice. Many modern florist roses are bred for shape and shipping rather than scent, and are not grown to food standards; use unsprayed garden or culinary-grade petals only.
- "All the green has been picked"This refers to the calyx and any green trimmings; cooks commonly also pinched off the pale heel at the base of each petal, which is traditionally held to be bitter. Either way it is tedious work, and it is the difference between a fragrant cordial and an astringent one.
- Warm, not hotThe recipe gives no temperature; 'warm' need be no more than hand-hot. Very hot or boiling water drives off the volatile rose oil, giving a stewed, jam-like note instead of fresh perfume.
- Two days at room temperatureA sugar-free water infusion left standing two days in a warm kitchen will ferment or mould. Cover it and keep it in the refrigerator, and discard it if it smells yeasty or looks cloudy rather than clear pink-brown.
- Proportions worked outA pint of water over the petals yields somewhat less than a pint of strained liquor; match it with the same volume of brandy. At half a pound of sugar per quart of the finished mixture, a pint of each takes about 8 oz sugar, which is a moderately sweet cordial by modern taste. Half that is closer to current drinking.
- Coriander and cinnamon"A little" here is genuinely small: about half a teaspoon of lightly crushed coriander seed and a two-inch piece of cassia or cinnamon bark per quart. Ground spice will not filter out and leaves the bottle muddy.
- FilteringFifteen days of maceration throws a fine haze. Strain through a coffee filter or a double layer of dampened muslin and let it drip rather than squeezing, which pushes sediment through.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 quart of finished ratafia, or twelve to sixteen small glasses. At roughly 20 percent alcohol it will keep for years in a sealed bottle away from light, though the colour fades from pink to amber within a year.
Ratafia is the old European name for a sweetened spirit infused with fruit, kernels or flowers rather than distilled with them, and it filled the place in a nineteenth-century household that a bought liqueur fills now. The name's origin is disputed: it is often traced to the legal tag rata fiat, a toast drunk to confirm an agreement, and sometimes to tafia, the West Indian cane spirit. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary the word covered dozens of variants, with almond and cherry-kernel ratafias the commonest, and it also survived as the name of the little bitter-almond biscuit crumbled into trifles. Rose was one of the flower ratafias, standing in a line with the older English tradition of rose waters and conserves, and its inclusion here reflects a kitchen that still expected to have a productive garden attached to it. The cold, patient method, days of steeping followed by a fortnight in spirit, is the same one used for domestic perfumes and medicinal cordials, and the coriander and cinnamon recall the heavily spiced hippocras and other spiced wines of an earlier era.