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Mead, Simple
A simple, delicious beverage, seldom made except by the cottager who keeps bees. After disposing of the bulk of the honey-produce, the goodwife economises what remains for the use of the family, thus. Dissolve a pound, or more, of honey in three quarts of water. Boil, skim, and reduce the liquid to half a gallon. Fill the vessel in which it is placed, cover, and let the mead be undisturbed for two or three days, when it is ready for use. The combs, after being drained, are washed in warm water, that nothing shall be lost, and the liquid is strained from the sediment, to be used to enrich the mead or to make the family beer, with the addition of a little yeast. It is kept warm by the fire for a few days to ferment, then bottled.
This is a cottage "short mead" — a lightly fermented honey drink meant to be finished in days rather than aged for a year. Two things need attention: the measurements are imperial, and the fermentation is entirely wild.
- Imperial measuresCassell's quart is 40 fl oz, so three quarts is 120 fl oz (about 3.4 litres) and the half gallon you reduce to is 80 fl oz (about 2.3 litres). In US measure that is roughly 3¾ quarts down to 2½ quarts.
- The strength, or lack of itA pound of honey reduced into half an imperial gallon is a fair concentration: a starting gravity somewhere around 1.05, which if fully fermented would be strong-beer strength or better. After only two or three days, though, it will be far less than that. This is a sweet, faintly fizzy table drink, not the aged mead of the mead-hall.
- Boiling drives off the honeyModern mead makers rarely boil, because the volatile aromatics that make a varietal honey worth using go up the chimney. Here the boil is doing double duty as a reduction and a pasteurisation, so it makes sense in context; expect a cooked, caramel character rather than a floral one.
- No yeast is namedNothing is pitched into the mead itself; presumably it was left to catch wild yeast from the comb, the vessel and its surroundings. A modern kitchen offers no such thing reliably. Without a pitched yeast the liquid may sour or do nothing at all — a sachet of wine or ale yeast at blood heat is what actually starts it.
- "Undisturbed for two or three days"That is the whole ferment. The drink is meant to be drunk young and cloudy, straight from the covered vessel, and it will not keep. Treat it as you would fresh cider or kvass and refrigerate what you do not drink.
- The washings and the bottlingRinsing the drained combs gives what brewers call second runnings — weak honey water, good for a light beer. Note that this is the part the original tells you to bottle after a few days of warm fermentation. Bottling a liquid that is still working builds pressure fast; use bottles rated for it, or leave the cap loose, or you will lose the bottles.
- YieldAbout half a gallon, or six to eight glasses.
Mead is among the fermented drinks with the longest history in northern Europe, but by the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century it had become exactly what this entry describes: a by-product of cottage beekeeping, not a drink anyone bought. The economy of the method is the point. Before movable-frame hives came into general use, honey was taken by crushing and draining the comb, and the sticky wax left behind still held a good deal of sugar; washing it out and fermenting the washings — usually called small mead — meant nothing went to waste. Sugar had grown cheaper in Britain by then, so honey had lost its place as the household sweetener and mead survived mainly where bees were kept for their own sake. The faintly condescending tone of the entry, with its goodwife and her economies, is characteristic of Victorian cookery books written for town households looking at country practice from the outside.