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Rich Mead or Metheglin, Equal to Foreign Wine

A honey wine made with water, egg whites, lemon rinds, and ale yeast, aged in a barrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Rich Mead or Metheglin, Equal to Foreign Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the honey mixture

  1. Mix the egg whites in the water.

  2. Boil the mixture for half an hour, skimming it well.

  3. Add the honey and lemon rinds, and boil together for a short time.

Ferment

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then add a little ale yeast.

  2. Transfer the mixture, including the lemon peel, into a seasoned barrel.

  3. Fill the barrel with reserved liquor as it flows over.

  4. When the hissing ceases, seal the barrel tightly.

Age and store

  1. After 5 to 6 months, bottle the mead for use.

  2. For long-term storage, add 1 pound of honey for every gallon of water.

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).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + honeytop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 turns into alcohol, and the main sweetness of the mead.
Egg whites
Bind impurities that rise as foam, so skimming removes them and the mead runs clearer.
Ale yeast
Ferments the honey's sugars into alcohol and carbonation as the barrel works.
Lemon rinds
Add aromatic oils and a bright citrus flavour to the mead.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling mixture. Egg whites coagulate and carry impurities to the surface as foam. Removing that foam during the half-hour boil keeps the mead clear and free of off-flavours.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, honey):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, honey. 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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