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On the Making of Mead

Mead is a fermented beverage made from honey, water, yeast, and optional hops, lemon peels, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

On the Making of Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil honey in water for 1 hour.

  2. Skim the mixture carefully, draining the skimmings through a fine sieve.

Ferment

  1. Once cooled, stir in the yeast.

  2. Ferment the mixture in a cool cellar for 1 year.

  3. Transfer to a cask and let it ferment in the usual manner.

  4. Optionally, add lemon peels and spices during fermentation.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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

Honey
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and most of the body and sweetness.
Yeast
Converts the sugars in the honey mixture into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Lemon peels
Adds aromatic oils and a bright citrus note to the finished mead.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast only once the mixture has cooled. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a still-hot boiled honey mixture can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling first keeps the yeast alive to do its work.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, tea, hops, cinnamon, ginger, clove, mace):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, tea, hops, cinnamon, ginger, clove, mace. 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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