Skip to main content
Drink

Mead or Metheglin

A honey wine made with water, honey, lemon peels, and yeast, fermented for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Honey and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,707 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Mead or Metheglin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil the water and honey together, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add the lemon peels while boiling.

  3. Pour the mixture into a clean tub and let it cool to milk-warm.

  4. Add yeast and stir to combine.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Transfer to a clean barrel and let it ferment for 5 to 6 months.

  2. After fermentation, bottle the mead for use.

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 + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast converts into alcohol, and the sweetness of the mead.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the honey and water, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Lemon peels
Adds aromatic oils and a bright citrus flavour to the mead.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while boiling. Foam carries impurities and proteins from the honey that can cloud the mead and spoil its flavour. Removing it during the boil keeps the finished mead clearer and cleaner tasting.

“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 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes