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Methelin, or Honey Wine

A fermented honey wine made with ginger, cloves, mace, cinnamon, 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 pot, combine strained honey and spring water.

  2. Add the whole egg and boil until the egg floats on top.

  3. Strain the mixture and pour it into a cask.

Ferment

  1. Add the bruised ginger, cloves, mace, and cinnamon in a muslin bag for flavor.

  2. Add yeast to accelerate fermentation.

  3. When fermentation is sufficient, seal the cask.

Bottle

  1. 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 body and sweetness.
Yeast
Converts the sugars in the honey into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Whole egg
Boiled in the honey mixture, it floats up and carries impurities to the surface, which are then skimmed or strained off.
White jamaica ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavor to the wine.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma and flavor to the wine.

The step that matters

Boil until the egg floats. The egg is the clarifying agent here, so it should be boiled until it floats, which signals the mixture is ready to strain. Stopping too early leaves more impurities in the wine.

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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