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Methelin, or Honey Wine

Honey wine made by fermenting honey, water, egg, spices, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Methelin, or Honey Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. In a large container, combine the strained honey and spring water.

  2. Add the whole egg and boil the mixture until the egg floats.

  3. Strain the liquid into a cask.

Ferment

  1. Tie the bruised ginger, cloves, mace, and cinnamon in a muslin bag and add to the cask.

  2. Add yeast to accelerate fermentation.

  3. Once fermentation is sufficient, seal the cask.

  4. After six weeks, draw off the liquid into bottles.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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

New honey
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and most of the wine's sweetness and body.
Whole egg
Its proteins coagulate when boiled, carrying impurities and sediment to the surface so they can be skimmed off.
Yeast
Converts the honey's sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
White jamaica ginger
Adds a warm, sharp spicy aroma and flavour to the wine.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet woody aroma and flavour to the wine.

The step that matters

Boil the honey mixture until the egg floats. Boiling dissolves the honey fully and coagulates the egg's proteins, which trap impurities and sediment. Stopping too early leaves the must cloudy and less clean-tasting; the egg is the visible cue that the boil has done its job.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, egg, ginger, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, egg, ginger, clove, cinnamon. 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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