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Drink

Sassafras Mead

A fermented beverage made from boiling water, brown sugar, molasses, tartaric acid, sassafras essence, and soda carbonate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sassafras Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mead

  1. In a large bowl, mix boiling water with brown sugar, West India molasses, and tartaric acid until well combined.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

  3. Strain the cooled mixture into a large jug or pan.

  4. Stir in the essence of sassafras.

Bottle and store

  1. Transfer the mixture to clean bottles.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly.

  3. Store the bottles in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Mix 1 tablespoon of the mead with ½ tumbler of ice water.

  2. Stir in ½ teaspoon of carbonate of soda until it foams.

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 + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the fermentable base for the mead.
West india molasses
Adds depth, dark color, and rich flavor to the sweetened base.
Tartaric acid
Adds tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar and molasses.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, creating foam and fizz when stirred in.

The step that matters

Stir in the carbonate of soda. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acid in the mead to release carbon dioxide, so it must be stirred into the diluted drink just before serving; added too early or to too much liquid, the fizz is lost.

“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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