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Drink

Capillaire Syrup

A medicinal syrup boiled with orange flower water and sealed with bladder pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,179 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Capillaire Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Boil the syrup until it blows.

  2. Boil it two or three times with the orange flower water, skimming constantly.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour the syrup into bottles and cork them the next day.

  2. Cover the corks with pieces of bladder, ensuring the syrup is fine before sealing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Syrup + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,179 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fine syrup
Provides the sugary base that gives sweetness and body to the finished syrup.
Orange flower water
Adds a floral aroma that carries through the finished syrup.

The step that matters

Skimming during each boil. Skimming constantly during each boil removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the syrup or spoil it in storage. Keep the boiling gentle, because heat drives off the volatile aromatics in the orange flower water.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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