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Dessert

To Make Capillaire

Capillaire is a sugar-based dessert made with orange flower water, lemon, spices, and egg whites, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Make Capillaire

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Mix the sugar, orange flower water, lemon juice, lemon rind, cloves, mace, cinnamon, spring water, and beaten egg whites in a large pot.

  2. Heat the mixture over a fire and boil for 15 minutes.

Strain and preserve

  1. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

  2. Preserve in small bottles with tight corks.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Dissolves into the spring water to form the sweet syrup base.
Whites of eggs
Coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they can be strained out clear.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup.
Orange flower water
Contributes a floral aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 15 minutes. The egg whites must be heated until they set so they can cling to impurities; boiling too briefly leaves them unset, so the syrup will not strain clear.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon, clove, cinnamon, 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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