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Drink

Mead

A fermented honey beverage made with honey, water, hops, and brandy, aged for a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and brandy work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 169 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil honey and water for 1 hour.

  2. Skim the mixture well.

  3. Add hops and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Let it stand until the next day.

Ferment and age

  1. Transfer to a cask and add brandy.

  2. Stop the cask lightly until fermentation is complete, then seal tightly.

  3. Age for 1 year before tapping.

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. Honey + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).

  2. Hops + brandytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

  3. Honey + hopstop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides the fermentable sugars that yeast turns into alcohol, and most of the body and sweetness.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the honey's sweetness and help preserve the mead.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps stabilise the mead against spoilage.

The step that matters

Stop the cask lightly until fermentation is complete. Fermentation gives off carbon dioxide, so a tightly sealed cask too early can build pressure or stall the yeast. Loose stopping lets gas escape while air is kept out, and sealing only after fermentation ends protects the mead from oxidation and spoilage.

“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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