Provençal recipe

Blackcurrant ratafia

Recipe no. 553 Reboul, 1909 Pantry

Recipe no. 553 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 245.

Ingredients

Preparation

  1. Combining the ingredientsCrush 1 kg of well-ripened blackcurrants and put them into a stoneware pot or a jar with 3 litres of brandy, 750 grams of sugar and 5 or 6 cloves.
  2. InfusingLet infuse about a month to 6 weeks, exposed to the sun or in a temperate place. Stir from time to time to let the sugar melt more easily.
  3. Filtering and bottlingPass through a fine cloth to bottle it, and 3 weeks later decant it to keep in the cellar.

Reboul's text

Crush 1 kilo of well-ripened blackcurrants, put them into a stoneware pot or a jar with 3 litres of brandy, 750 grams of sugar and 5 or 6 cloves; let infuse about a month to 6 weeks, exposed to the sun or in a temperate place. Stir from time to time to let the sugar melt more easily. You will then pass it through a fine cloth to bottle it, and 3 weeks later decant it to keep in the cellar.

This liqueur improves greatly with age.

Small Provençal glossary for this recipe

Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.

ProvençalEnglish
cassisblackcurrants
aigo-ardèntbrandy
sucresugar
giroflecloves
enfusainfuse

Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 553, page 245. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.