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Drink

Mead

Fermented beverage made from honey, water, spices, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare the honey liquor

  1. Boil 13 gallons of water.

  2. Add 30 pounds of honey.

  3. Skim the mixture.

  4. Add 1 handful each of rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, and sweet-briar.

  5. Boil for 1 hour.

  6. Transfer the mixture to a tub.

  7. Stir in a little ground malt until lukewarm.

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

Add yeast and spices

  1. Cut a toast.

  2. Spread the toast with good yeast.

  3. Add the yeast-covered toast to the tub.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a barrel.

  5. Bruise the spices (cloves, mace, nutmegs, ginger).

  6. Tie the bruised spices in a rag.

  7. Hang the ragged spices in the vessel.

  8. Seal the vessel 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. 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 the yeast ferments into alcohol, and the main body of the drink.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the honey liquor into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Ground malt
Adds enzymes and sugars that help the yeast get started in the mixture.
Cloves
Contribute warm, pungent aroma to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Seal the vessel tightly. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide and invites spoilage organisms; an airtight vessel lets gas escape slowly while keeping air and contaminants out, so the mead ferments cleanly.

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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