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To make Ratafia d'Angelique.
Take of angelica seeds, 1 dr.; stalks of angelica, bitter almonds, blanched, each 4 oz.; proof spirit, 12 pts.; white sugar, 2 lbs. Digest, strain, and filter.
Anisette de Bourdeaux.
Take of sugar, 9 oz.; oil of aniseed, 6 drops.
Rub them together, and add by degrees, spirit of wine, 2 pts .; water, 4 pts. Filter.
To make Real Creme des Barbades.
Take 2 doz. middling-sized lemons; 6 large citrons; loaf sugar, 28 lbs,; fresh balm leaves, Ib.; spirit of wine, 2½ galls.; water, 3½ galls. This will produee about 7 galls., full measure. Cut the lemons and citrons in thin slices, and put them into a cask; pour upon them the spirit of wine, bung down close, and let it stand 10 days or a fortnight, then break the sugar, and boil it for an hour in the 3½ galls. of water, skimming it frequently; then chop the balm-leaves, put them into a large pan, and pour upon them the boiling liquor, and let it stand till quite cold; then strain it through a lawn sieve, and put it to the spirits, etc., in the cask; bung down close, and in a fortnight draw it off; strain it through a jelly bag, and let it remain to fine; then bottle it.
Eau de Barbades.
Take of fresh orange-peel, 1 oz.; fresh lemonpeel, 4 oz. ; cloves, 1/2 dr. ; coriander, 1 dr.; proof spirit, 4 pts. Distill in a bath heat and add white sugar in powder.
To make Ratafia de Cafe.
Take of roasted coffee, ground, 1 lb.; proof spirit, 1 gall.; sugar, 20 oz. Digest for a week.
Ratafia de Cassis.
Take of ripe black currants, 6 lbs.; cloves, dr.; cinnamon, 1 dr.; proof spirit, 18 pts. ; sugar, 3 lbs. Digest for a fortnight.
Ratafia des Cerises.
Take of morello cherries, with their kernels, bruised, 8 lbs.; proof spirit, 8 pts. Digest for a month, strain with expression, and then add 1½ lbs. of sugar.
Ratafia de Chocolat.
Take of Caracoa cocoanuts, roasted, 1 lb.; West India cocoanuts, roasted, 1/2 lb.; proof spirit, 1 gall. Digest for a fortnight, strain, and then add sugar, 1½ lbs.; tincture of vanilla, 30 drops.
Eau Divine.
Take of spirit of wine, 1 gall.; essence of lemons, and essence of bergamot, each 1 dr. Distill in a bath heat; add sugar, 4 lbs. dissolved in 2 galls. of pure water; and, lastly, orange-fl:wer water, 5 oz.
Elephant's Milk. pt.; boiling water, 2½ pts. When cold, strain; Take of gum benzoin, 2 oz. ; spirit of wine, 1 and add sugar, 1½ lbs.
Ratafia de Grenoble.
Take of small wild black cherries, with their kernels, bruised, 12 lbs.; proof spirit, 6 galls.
Digest for a month, strain, and then add 12 lbs. of sugar. A little citron peel may also be added at pleasure.
Marasquin de Groseilles.
Take of gooseberries, quite ripe, 102 lbs.; black cherry leaves, 12 lbs. Bruise and ferment; distill and rectify the spirits. To each pint of this spirit add as much distilled water, and sugar, 1 lb.
Huile de Venus.
Take of flowers of the wild carrot, picked, 6 oz.; spirit of wine, 10 pts. Distill in a bath heat. To be colored with cochineal. the spirit add as much syrup of capillaire; it may Liquodilla.
Take the thin peel of 6 oranges and 6 lemons, steep them in a gallon of brandy or rum, close and 3 lbs. of loaf sugar clarified with the whites stopped for 2 or 3 days; then take 6 qts. of water , of 3 eggs. Let it boil 1/4 of an hour, then strain it through a fine sieve, and let it stand till cold; strain the brandy from the peels, and add the juice of 5 oranges and 7 lemons to each gallon.
Keep it close stopped up 6 weeks, then bottle it.
Ratafia de Brou de Noix. hardened, in number 60; brandy, 4 pts.; sugar, Take of young walnuts, whose shells are not yet 12 oz.; mace, cinnamon, and cloves, each, 15 gr. filter, and keep it for 2 or 3 years.
Digest for 2 or 3 months, press out the liquor, Ratafia de Noyeau.
Take of peach or apricot kernels, with their shells bruised, in number 120; proof spirit, 4 pts.; sugar, 10 oz. Some reduce the spirit of wine to proof with the juice of apricots or peaches, to make this liqueur.
Creme de Noyeau de Martinique.
Take 20 lbs. of loaf sugar; 3 galls. of spirit of wine; 3 pts. of orange-flower water; 11 lbs. of bitter almonds; 2 drs. of essence of lemon; and 44 galls. of water. The produce will exceed 8 galls.
Put 2 lbs. of the loaf sugar into a jug or can, pour upon it the essence of lemon, and 1 qt. of the and the essence completely incorporated. Bruise spirit of wine: stir it till the sugar is dissolved, the almonds, and put them into a 4 gall. stone bottle or cask, add the remainder of the spirit of wine, and the mixture from the jug or can; let it Then add the remainder of the sugar, and boil it stand a week or 10 days, shaking it frequently. in the 4½ galls. of water for of an hour, taking off the scum as it rises. When cold, put it in a cask; add the spirit, almonds, etc., from the stone bottle; and lastly, the orange-flower water. Bung it down close, and let it stand 3 weeks or a month; then strain it through a jelly bag, and when fine bottle it off. When the pink is wanted add cochineal, in powder, at the rate of 1/2 a dr., or 2 scr. to a qt.
Ratafia d'Ecorces d'Oranges.
Take of fresh peel of Seville oranges, 4 oz.; proof spirit, 1 gall.; sugar, 1 lb. Digest for 6 hours.
Ratafia de Fleurs d'Oranges.
Take of fresh flowers of orange-tree, 2 lbs.
This is a run of ratafias and cordials from the distilling section, and several of them are built on materials that are no longer considered food. The notes below explain the vocabulary and the specific hazards rather than offering conversions to work from.
- Bitter almonds and fruit kernelsRatafia d'Angelique, Creme de Noyeau de Martinique and Ratafia de Noyeau all rely on bitter almonds or bruised peach and apricot kernels, whose flavour comes from amygdalin — a compound that releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernels are crushed and steeped. Quantities here run to pounds of bitter almonds and 120 kernels at a time, well beyond any tolerable dose, and cold maceration does nothing to drive the cyanide off. Bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States, and modern noyau flavour is made with almond extract or benzaldehyde instead.
- Gum benzoinElephant's Milk is a spirit tincture of gum benzoin, a balsamic tree resin. It is used today in incense, cosmetics and as a topical tincture, not as a drink; it is a recognised skin and mucous-membrane sensitiser and has no place in a glass.
- DistillingSeveral entries — Eau de Barbades, Eau Divine, Huile de Venus, Marasquin de Groseilles — direct you to distil or to ferment and rectify. Operating a still to concentrate alcohol is a federal offence in the United States without a permit, regardless of scale, and the practice carries real fire and methanol risks. Buy the base spirit.
- CochinealPowdered cochineal, called for to tint the noyeau and the Huile de Venus, is a genuine insect-derived colourant still permitted in food, but it must be declared on labels because it triggers allergic reactions in a small number of people.
- What "proof spirit" and "spirit of wine" meanProof spirit in British usage of this period is roughly 57 per cent alcohol by volume; spirit of wine is rectified alcohol, commonly somewhere between 85 and 95 per cent. The two are not interchangeable, and any recipe here that reads oddly weak or strong usually turns on which one was meant.
- The small weightsA drachm (dr.) in apothecaries' weight is one eighth of an apothecaries' ounce, about 3.9 g. A scruple (scr.) is a third of a drachm, roughly 1.3 g. A grain (gr.) is about 65 mg, so the 15 gr. of mace or cloves in the walnut ratafia is under a gram. Whether the pints and gallons are imperial or US wine measure depends on the edition; the text does not say.
- "Digest" and "fine"To digest is simply to macerate at gentle warmth or room temperature in a stoppered vessel. To let a liqueur fine is to leave it standing until the suspended solids settle and the liquid clears before racking or bottling.
- Caracoa cocoanutsThe chocolate ratafia does not use coconut. "Caracoa" is Caracas, and the ingredient is cacao nuts — roasted cocoa beans, now sold as cacao nibs.
- Balm and capillaireBalm leaves are lemon balm, Melissa officinalis. Syrup of capillaire is a maidenhair-fern syrup, usually orange-flower scented; it was a standard sweetener in period punches and has effectively disappeared from commerce.
Ratafia was the general European name for a fruit, nut or spice liqueur made by steeping rather than distilling, and by the early nineteenth century the word covered everything from a farmhouse cherry infusion to a commercial Parisian cordial; the etymology is disputed, though it is often traced to a toast pronounced at the ratification of a bargain. Colin Mackenzie's compilation, first issued in the 1820s as Five Thousand Receipts and only later circulated as Ten Thousand Receipts, gathered this material for a readership that included both householders and small tradesmen, which is why the same page slides from a six-pint batch of anisette to seven-gallon casks of Creme des Barbades weighed out with 28 lbs of loaf sugar. The heavy reliance on bitter almonds and stone-fruit kernels reflects a period in which the almond note of noyau was the most fashionable flavour in the confectioner's repertoire and the danger of prussic acid, isolated and named only in the late eighteenth century, was understood by chemists long before it reached the recipe books.