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Drink

Sassafras Mead

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 syrup

  1. Mix boiling water and light brown sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add New Orleans molasses and tartaric acid; stir well.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then strain into a granite pitcher.

Flavour and bottle

  1. Once cool, add essence of sassafras.

  2. Bottle the mixture, cork tightly, and store in a cool place.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 1 tablespoon of mead with a tumbler half full of ice water.

  2. Stir in ½ teaspoon of carbonate of soda to create foam.

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

Light brown sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and feeds the flavour of the finished mead.
New orleans molasses
Adds deep, rich sweetness and a darker colour with caramel notes.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and gives a tart bite.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid when stirred in, releasing carbon dioxide to create foam.
Essence of sassafras
Supplies the characteristic sassafras aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the carbonate of soda at serving. Soda and tartaric acid react quickly to release carbon dioxide, which makes the foam. If it is added early, or the drink sits, the gas escapes and the fizz is lost, so it should be added just before serving.

“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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