Skip to main content
Drink

Mead

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the honey liquor

  1. Boil 13 gallons of water with 30 pounds of honey and skim well.

  2. Add a handful each of rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, and sweet-briar, then boil for 1 hour.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a tub and stir in a little ground malt until lukewarm.

  4. Strain the mixture through a cloth back into the tub.

Ferment

  1. Spread good yeast on a toast and add it to the tub.

  2. When the mixture is covered with yeast, transfer it to a barrel.

  3. Bruise 1.5 ounces each of cloves, mace, and nutmeg, and 1 ounce of sliced ginger.

  4. Wrap the spices in a rag and hang it in the vessel, sealing it tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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, forming the body of the mead.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the honey liquor into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Ground malt
Supplies enzymes and extra fermentable sugars to help the fermentation along.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the finished drink.
Ginger
Adds a sharp, aromatic spice note to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Covering the mixture with yeast before barrelling. Yeast must be spread evenly over the warm liquid and given time to start working; transferring too early, or letting the liquid cool or overheat, can slow or stall fermentation.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More mead recipes

Sarsaparilla 10Cowslip 8Sassafras 7Sack 6 See all 45 →

You might also like

Ginger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesGinger TeaGinger Tea9 recipes