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Capillaire

Capillaire is a syrup made from loaf sugar, moist sugar, water, eggs, and 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the loaf sugar in the water.

  2. Beat the whites and yolks of the eggs separately with the moist sugar, then stir them into the mixture.

  3. Boil the syrup gently and skim it well.

  4. Stir in the orange-flower water, let it cool, and bottle it.

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 bind impurities that rise as scum, which is then skimmed off to clarify the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Dissolves in water to form the sweet base of the syrup.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a soft, slightly molasses-like flavour to the syrup.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral, aromatic note to the finished syrup.

The step that matters

Skim the syrup well after boiling. Egg white coagulates as the syrup heats and traps impurities, forming a scum on the surface. Removing it thoroughly leaves the syrup clear. Boiling gently prevents the scum from being mixed back in.

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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