Name: Syrup of Capillaire
Ingredients: 2 quarts clarified sugar; ½ pint orange-flower water

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 ↓

Syrup of Capillaire

Ingredients

2 quarts clarified sugar
½ pint orange-flower water

Directions

Make the syrup

Put the clarified sugar into a preserving pan.
Boil briskly for 3 minutes.
Add the orange-flower water and let it boil up.
Skim off any scum that rises.

Bottle

Pour the syrup into bottles and cork them tightly when cold.

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.

Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Clarified sugar: Forms the sweet body of the syrup and sets its thickness as it boils.
Orange-flower water: Adds a delicate floral aroma that carries the flavour of the syrup.

“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.