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Drink

Capillaire, a Pleasant and Refreshing Drink

A sweet syrup made from sugar, water, eggs and orange-flower water, diluted with water and vinegar to make a drink.

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, a Pleasant and Refreshing Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the loaf sugar in the water.

  2. Beat the whites of the eggs separately with the moist sugar.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs separately with the moist sugar.

  4. Stir the beaten whites and yolks into the mixture.

  5. Boil the syrup gently.

  6. Skim the syrup well.

  7. Stir in the orange-flower water.

Cool and bottle

  1. Let the syrup cool.

  2. Bottle the syrup.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix a dessert spoonful of this syrup with a little vinegar in a tumbler of cold water.

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

Eggs
Their whites and yolks are beaten and stirred in, helping to clarify and skim the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Dissolved in water to form the sweet base of the syrup.
Moist sugar
Beaten with the eggs, adding sweetness and a deeper flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Skim the syrup well. Boiling the egg mixture causes the whites to coagulate and carry impurities to the surface. Removing this foam thoroughly keeps the syrup clear and clean-tasting.

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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