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Ratafia
This is the name given to spirituous liquor when flavoured with the kernels of various fruits, like peaches, apricots, and cherries. It should be dropped into any preparation with great care, as, though very delicious when sparingly used, it is poisonous as well as most unpleasant when moderation is not exercised. Small biscuits flavoured with sweet and bitter almonds are named ratafias. Distilled peach or apricot leaves, when cut in the spring, may be used instead of ratafia for flavouring puddings. One way of making ratafia is as follows. Take the stones from two pounds of morella cherries, and pound them well with one ounce of blanched apricot kernels and a spoonful of brandy. Put them into a large stone jar with a quart of fine brandy, and cover closely. Let the jar remain for six weeks, and shake it twice a day. Strain the liquor through a sieve with blotting-paper laid in it, and add half a pound of white sugar-candy dissolved in a quarter of a pint of cold water. Taste the ratafia, and if not sufficiently sweet add a little more sugar-candy. Put the preparation into small bottles, cork these closely, and store. If apricot kernels cannot easily be obtained, blanched bitter almonds may be used instead. Sufficient for nearly three pints.
This is a cordial built on fruit kernels, and the book is candid that it is poisonous when used freely. The reason is specific and worth understanding.
- The hazard is cyanide, not a vague "strength"Cherry stones, apricot kernels and bitter almonds all contain amygdalin, which enzymes in the crushed kernel and in the gut convert to hydrogen cyanide. Pounding the kernels, as directed here, is exactly what liberates it, and alcohol extracts the compound efficiently over six weeks.
- The quantity is far past a flavouring doseThe kernels of two pounds of morellos plus an ounce of blanched apricot kernels is a large charge of amygdalin steeped into a single quart. The result is not a bottle you measure by the drop for a pudding but nearly three pints of drinkable cordial, which is where the danger lies.
- There is no way to titrate it at homeAmygdalin content varies widely between fruit varieties, seasons and individual stones. No amount of tasting, straining through blotting-paper or dilution with sugar-candy syrup tells you how much cyanogenic glycoside is in the jar.
- Bitter almonds are not a shop substituteThe recipe offers blanched bitter almonds as a swap for apricot kernels. Unprocessed bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States and are restricted elsewhere; the almond extract on a supermarket shelf is a different product entirely, being either synthetic benzaldehyde or bitter almond oil from which the hydrogen cyanide has been removed.
- The peach and apricot leaves are the same problemPrunus leaves are cyanogenic too, and the "distilled" leaf flavouring suggested here compounds a toxicity issue with home distilling, which requires a licence or is prohibited outright in many jurisdictions regardless of what is in the still.
- If you want the flavourThe marzipan-and-stone-fruit note this cordial is chasing is available from commercially produced noyau-style liqueurs and from bitter almond extract, both made under controlled conditions. Use a current recipe rather than adapting this one.
Ratafia is one of the oldest names in the European cordial cupboard, generally traced to the seventeenth century and often said to come from the Latin rata fiat, the toast drunk when an agreement was ratified, though the derivation is traditional rather than settled. In practice the word covered two things: a sweetened spirit flavoured with fruit kernels, of which the French noyau is the best-known survivor, and the small crisp almond biscuits, still sold as ratafias, that Victorian cooks crumbled into trifles and charlottes. Ratafia was treated as a flavouring on the same shelf as vanilla or rose water, to be dropped into any preparation with great care and measured by the drop. The frank warning about poison is characteristic of the period's attitude: the bitter-almond note was understood to be dangerous in quantity and was used anyway, carefully, because nothing else tasted like it. The distinction between a flavouring used by drops and a cordial poured by the glass is the whole of the matter, and this recipe makes both from the same jar.