Why it works: Honey and bread work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓
How to Make Mead
Ingredients
Directions
Make the must
Pour boiling water over honey in a large container.
Boil and remove scum as it rises.
Add hops and boil for 10 minutes.
Cool the mixture in a tub.
Ferment
When nearly cold, add yeast spread on toasted bread.
Let it stand in a warm room until fermentation begins.
Transfer to a cask, topping up as yeast escapes.
When fermentation is complete, seal the cask with a peg-hole.
Bottle
After less than a year, it will be ready to bottle.
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.
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Honey + breadtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together64 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
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Honey + hopstop 41% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1 recipe
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Hops + breadtop 47% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1 recipe
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Honey
- Provides the sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol, and the mead's sweetness.
- Hops
- Adds bitterness that balances the honey's sweetness and helps preserve the drink.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Add the yeast when the mixture is nearly cold. Yeast is killed by high heat, so pitching it while the must is still hot can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling first lets the yeast survive and begin working.
“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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