Ratafia de cerises (cherry ratafia)

It's a French liqueur made from brandy infused with fresh fruit, often cherries. I've got an old (1920s-30s) French cookbook which I love (Cooking with Pomiane by Edouard de Pomiane) and the author has a recipe for this stuff. But as I was googling around, I learned to my surprise that cherry pits (as well as apple seeds, apricot pits, and others) have a small amount of a cyanide compound (hydrocyanic acid). Swallow a pit or two and no problem. But you don't want to crush them and use them. I won't belabor the issue except to say that I spent a while on the net and finally concluded that while cherry pits can clearly be toxic.

The question I couldn't answer is, is it dangerous to steep the whole, unpitted fruit in brandy for a couple months (what the recipe calls for)? I have to say I'm inclined to believe it's safe. And yet, the danger is death, not just sickness. Unlike commercial producers, I'm not distilling or otherwise treating the finished product at all so, acting out of an abundance of caution, I pitted the cherries.

The purpose of my post is NOT to create a thread filled with speculation or guesses, even somewhat informed guesses. I'm posting to ask if anyone knows with some fair degree of certainty whether dropping whole, uncrushed, unpitted cherries in brandy is at all dangerous? Thanks.

I'd say error on the side of caution.

My own ratafia experience came @ the end of a wild boar hunt on the boarder of Province and Cote d'zure. One of the farmers leading the hunt brought some he'd made in a flask to keep us through the day. Never been able to repeat that pleasure. Would love to see what you end up with.

I'd agree with Jazzfood to err on the side of caution.

I know that my in laws make something like this with brandy and whole cherries steeped and put it up in jars. They surprised me once with a cherry to help me with some 'stomach discomfort'. I was surprised to find the pit in the middle of the cherry, especially since it was put up for 'a while' with no clear definitive date. I lived to survive the tail but I would probably have done the same thing as you and pitted the cherries in making your Ratafia.

Wait, there's a thread somewhere about this (not the risks, the making of cherry bombs)...

viewtopic.php?t=4355

It occurred to me that I have some Griottines (Morello cherries macerated in Kirsh Brandy) from France here in a jar. For what it's worth, they're pitted.

I also contacted food scientist/professor and fellow LTH'r, Sazarac for his opinion and will post his reply.

this guy grinds up the pits and puts them into his brandy. we don't know if he's still alive though:

http://www.homebrewunderground.com/39/d ... pe-part-1/

Alan: duh! What a smart, logical, informative idea. Why didn't I think of that?

teatpuller: wow! I'm guessing he's still around. But grinding up the pits like that runs counter to most of what I've read.

Conclusion: what do I know, anyway?

Egads, I'm no food scientist. Just someone who likes to eat (and drink, don't forget the drink).
FWIW the kernel is what contains the HCN (or prussic acid) so unless the outer seed coat is broken (and the cherry pit is really hard and woody), I don't see that soaking some whole cherries in a much greater volume of alcohol should extract the HCN and be an issue. I've soaked whole sour cherries in vodka for a year. I detect no bitterness in the vodka.
Gypsy Boy, can you taste the bitterness of bitter almonds? (Some cannot)

Talking about grinding up the pits - I'm now curious about mahlab.

Nastrovia!

Talking about grinding up the pits - I'm now curious about mahlab

Apricot kernels are traditionally used in amaretti cookies. but I believe that roasting them is supposed to deactivate the prussic acid. Trader Joe's sells the roasted ones. Maybe the cherry kernel in mahlab is roasted as well?

I've soaked whole cherries as well for a couple of months in alcohol and suffered no ill effects. I've also read a number of recipes for desserts like clafouti in which leaving the pits in the cherries to add more flavor has been indicated, with no reference to poison.

In my time, I've also ingested a lot of apple seeds.

Most of the recipes I've seen just says to bruise the fruit w/no mention of seeds.

Fascinating. I guess I would have been fine to soak them in the brandy and not bother pitting them. The temptation now--except for the cost of another good bottle of brandy--is to do an identical test run with unpitted cherries and see if any taste difference is discernible. My guess is "probably not." Except I can't help wonder whether breaking the cherries by pitting them will result in a stronger cherry flavor. Das?

(Oh, and to answer your question: yes, I can, but it's not a strong sensation.)

BTW what's the brandy/cherry ratio?

If I recall the recipe (at the office now), the original called for 3-1/2 pints of brandy and 2-1/4 pounds of cherries. I cut the recipe about in half and used about a pound of cherries and a fifth of good brandy. The recipe calls for two months of being left alone but my guess is that with the cherries broken, a month may be more than enough time.

Time to report back. After a month, I pulled the cherries out of the brandy. Since they had been pitted, I figured a month was more than enough time for their flavor to leach out. And I was right: I tasted a cherry. It tasted like nothing but brandy. If I had been blindfolded, I would never have guessed it was a cherry I was eating.

Then, per the instructions of M. de Pomiane, I added simple syrup. Stirred, let rest. Filtered. Tasted.

A very interesting brew. Not, to my surprise, redolent of cherry, although that may be because I used brandy and not a neutral spirit. Indeed, there is a distinct flavor there. Maybe using a neutral spirit like vodka is the way to go. Still, the sugar cut the volatility of the alcohol and it's very easy to drink and quite pleasant just as is. The brandy and the cherry make for what would be a very different drink if it were cherry and vodka, say. I think the piece of cinnamon bark added a stronger note than I expected. Either way, I can see this as a very nice way to spend a summer day.

Gypsy Boy,

If I were you I would not worry too much. I read your post only last night while eating a few cherries in kirschwasser that my sister makes every year with "griottes" (small pretty acidic red cherries) picked from the orchard of our old small family country house near Geneva Switzerland. She gave me a jar last September when I visited. But I have been eating them with no problem during my whole life since I was in age to have the right to consume this kind if stuff. Same with "Eau de Vie de Noyau" , a brandy made from macerated pits or kernels from apricots, peaches, or cherries, in a neutral fruit clear spirit that was very common in various parts of rural France, especially in Normandy. My grand-mother in Geneva used to make it with apricots kernels. And as far as I remember, when an old peasant who was a friend of the family made his "ratafia de cerise" he crushed the pits before maceration and of course everything was filtered at the end of the process before he added some cognac.
I think I would have heard something if anybody in my family, and we sure liked homemade fruit liquors or spirits, had suffered from a deadly attack of prussic acid.

alain40 wrote:And as far as I remember, when an old peasant who was a friend of the family made his "ratafia de cerise" he crushed the pits before maceration and of course everything was filtered at the end of the process before he added some cognac.

Am I right, then, in understanding that the ratafia was made with a neutral fruit clear spirit and, at the end, "regular" brandy was also added? One other question: the recipe I used (Edouard de Pomiane's) ended up sweeter than I anticipated. Is ratafia supposed to be a sweet drink?

Gypsy Boy,

I'm not an expert on ratafia, and my memories on that topic are quite fuzzy, but I think that in France, most fruit-based ratafias are made with a neutral spirit (eau-de-vie) generally rated 45 degree in alcohol content, and I suppose that in some regions they use a spirit distilled from fruit.
Then some people add a kind of brandy at the end, but not necessarily. I did not drink cherry ratafia for ages but I think that I remember that it was a little bit on the sweet side. Anyway the color was quite dark red and it was very aromatic. Most people used to drink ratafia as an apéritif (before dinner drink).
Ratafia de cerise was originally made in the Grenoble and Dauphiné area.
My brother who lives in the middle of the Champagne vineyards drink a local home-made ''ratafia de Champagne'' made with grapes from that area that are macerated with a spirit and some `''marc de champagne'' a spirit similar to grappa. It is semi-sweet but has a very assertive taste . It is served slightly chilled as a before dinner drink.

One other question: the recipe I used (Edouard de Pomiane's) ended up sweeter than I anticipated. Is ratafia supposed to be a sweet drink?

Often, yes. It traditionally was an aperitif favored by ladies in Regency & Victorian times in England because of the sweetness. All the versions I've ever been offered in England were quite sweet.

Elizabeth David offers some modern modifications of de Pomiane's recipes (it was through her that I originally discovered his books). She recommends pitting the cherries & then roasting some of the kernels before adding them to the mixture. The heating destroys the cyanic acid; only using a portion of the kernels supposedly reduces the bitterness of the final product versus using all of the kernels. Cultivated cherries also don't have very high percentages of cyanic acid & really don't pose a risk (its been bred out of them, compared to wild cherries - the bitterness of the kernels is an indicator of the higher cyanic level in wild cherries, almonds etc).

Jacques Pepin just made some cherry alcoholic thing that seems similar on Fast Food My Way - not only did he leave in the pits, he said it was important to leave part of the stem to keep the cherries from being mushy (jar of cherries, stems trimmed but not removed, shot of Karo syrup, and "the highest vodka you can find" I assume he meant highest-proof, set aside (refrigerated? I don't remember) 6-8 weeks.) Since he's still alive...