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Drink

Capillaire — Continued

A syrup made by boiling maidenhair fern, filtering, adding orange‑flower water, and dissolving sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar 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 — Continued

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the maidenhair fern in boiling water for 24 hours.

  2. Press out and filter the liquid.

  3. Add orange-flower water and dissolve loaf sugar according to desired syrup consistency.

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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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

Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and sets the syrup's thickness as more is dissolved.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma that flavors the finished syrup.
Maidenhair fern
Steeped in boiling water so its flavor infuses the liquid that is filtered out.

The step that matters

Dissolving the loaf sugar to the desired consistency. The amount of sugar dissolved controls how thick the syrup becomes. Too little leaves it thin and watery, while too much can crystallize as it cools, so add it gradually and check the texture.

“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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