Skip to main content
Drink

On the Making Op Mead

A fermented honey beverage made by boiling honey with water, adding yeast, and fermenting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Op 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.

  3. Once cooled, stir in the yeast.

Ferment and age

  1. Let it ferment for a period.

  2. Transfer to a cask and ferment in the usual manner.

  3. Store in a cool cellar for 1 year before bottling.

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 + rosemarytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together845 recipes

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

  5. Clove + rosemarytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 the yeast ferments, giving the mead its sweetness and alcohol.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the whole fermentation.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast only once the liquid has cooled. Yeast is a living organism that heat kills. Adding it to hot liquid after boiling can kill it, so the fermentation may never start. Cooling first keeps the yeast alive to convert the honey sugars.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Orangefits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

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

More mead recipes

Sarsaparilla 10Cowslip 8Sassafras 7Sack 6 See all 45 →

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipes