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Drink

Coicslip Mead

A fermented honey beverage flavored with lemons and cowslip-pips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Coicslip Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the honey liquid

  1. Boil honey and water until 1 gallon is reduced.

  2. Skim the mixture and remove from heat.

  3. Pour boiling liquid over the quartered lemons.

Ferment and age

  1. Place the remaining liquid in a tub with cowslip-pips and let sit overnight.

  2. Combine the liquid and lemons with yeast and sweet briar; stir well.

  3. Let the mixture ferment for 3-4 days.

  4. Strain and transfer to a cask.

  5. Allow to stand for 6 months before bottling.

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 body of the mead.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and supports a clean fermentation.
Cowslip-pips
Contribute floral aroma and flavour to the finished mead.

The step that matters

Skimming and boiling the honey mixture. Boiling dissolves the honey fully and sterilises the liquid, while skimming removes foam and impurities that could spoil the flavour or ferment unevenly. Cooling before adding yeast matters because very hot liquid would kill the yeast.

“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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