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Dessert

Capillaire Syrup

A syrup made by infusing capillaire (maidenhair) in boiling water, sweetened with sugar, clarified with egg white, and flavored with orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Capillaire Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Infuse 1 oz. of capillaire in a small amount of boiling water like tea.

  2. Add 1 lb. of sugar to the infusion and clarify it with the egg white.

  3. Boil the mixture until it reaches a pearl stage.

  4. Strain the syrup through a cloth.

Finish and bottle

  1. Once cool, add a little orange‑flower water and bottle it.

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. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled, the thick body of the syrup.
Capillaire (maidenhair)
Gives the syrup its characteristic herbal flavour from the infusion.
Egg white
Binds impurities during clarifying so they can be strained out, leaving a clear syrup.

The step that matters

Boil to the pearl stage. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and its concentration rises. Stopping at the pearl stage, where small bubbles gather on the surface, sets the right consistency; boiling too long makes the syrup too thick once cooled.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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