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Mead or Metheglin

A honey wine flavored with lemon rinds, brewed with egg whites and ale yeast.

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 ↓

Mead or Metheglin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Mix the egg whites in 12 gallons of water.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam.

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

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

Ferment and store

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

  2. Fill the barrel with reserved liquor as it overflows, then seal it tightly.

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

  4. 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 converts into alcohol, and the main sweetness of the mead.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugars in the honey and water into alcohol and carbonation.
Egg whites
Collect impurities and foam during boiling, which are then skimmed off to clarify the liquid.
Lemon rinds
Add aromatic oils and a citrus flavour to the mead.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while boiling. Egg whites coagulate and carry impurities to the surface as foam. Removing it during the 30-minute boil clarifies the liquid and reduces off-flavours in the finished mead.

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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