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Drink

Mead

A fermented honey beverage with herbs, spices, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Rosemary and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,340 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil 13 gallons of water and add 30 pounds of honey, skimming well.

  2. Add a handful each of rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, and sweet-briar.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Transfer to a tub.

  5. Let cool to lukewarm.

  6. Strain through a cloth back into the tub.

Add yeast and spices

  1. Cut a piece of toast, spread it with good yeast, and add to the tub.

  2. Seal the tub when the surface is covered with yeast.

  3. Bruise the spices (cloves, mace, nutmeg, ginger) and tie them in a rag.

  4. Hang the rag in the vessel.

  5. Seal the vessel tightly 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. Rosemary + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Rosemary + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and the main body of the mead.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the honey water into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the honey dissolves into and the yeast ferments.

The step that matters

Let cool to lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cooled before the yeast-spread toast goes in. Adding it while hot can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, rosemary, thyme, malt, clove, nutmeg, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, rosemary, thyme, malt, clove, nutmeg, ginger. 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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