[Sca-cooks] honey

[Stefan li Rous]

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Galefridus commented:
<<< Inexpensive
grocery store honey is OK for initial practice, but the higher quality
honey behaves differently and results in a more delicate flavor. >>>

Ok, I can believe that the generic grocery story honey has a different 
flavor, but what do you mean it behaves differently?

I think that common grocery store honey is honey that comes from bees 
feeding on unknown plants or at a variety of plants that the beekeepers 
couldn?t really track. Usually clover honey here in Texas.
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Ah, okay. I had read that as Galefridus saying that the structure of the honey varied because it cam from say orange-blossom honey, rather than the common grocery store clover honey. I was assuming that that was what he meant by higher-quality honey, rather than that the higher quality honey had undergone less processing. I couldn’t see how the honey from different pollen sources would actually change the structure, rather than the taste, which it definitely can. 

Some of those honeys I mentioned had wildly different tastes. If you could afford it, using a variety of different honeys in different Sekanjabins, could give you a lot of variety in taste, even if the rest of the ingredients were kept the same.

We have discussed, and debated how pasteurization may affect things like milk and honey previously, but this is a much more detailed discussion than before, at least on honey.

I’ve heard that you don’t need to boil and scim modern honey because it has been filtered, that what the medieval recipes were doing is removing any wax and odd bits of stuff like dead bees and parts of bees. If this is the case, then it also avoids the over boiling that some have mentioned.

Stefan
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THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at gmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
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