Infused honey

Definition

Honey with an ingredient added to it by a person rather than a bee, whether by steeping dried material, by dosing a standardised extract, or by adding a flavouring. Distinguished from every other honey category by the fact that the difference was introduced after the honey left the hive: floral and honeydew honeys differ because of what the bees foraged, comb and creamed honeys because of presentation and crystal control, and infused honeys because of a recipe. Whether an infused honey keeps like plain honey depends entirely on what was added — dried material changes little, wet material changes the water activity that preserves honey in the first place.

Where the word gets used loosely

Honey's reputation for never spoiling is routinely transferred to infused jars. That reputation belongs to honey, whose low water activity leaves nothing for microbes to use; it is not a property of the jar, and it does not describe conditions at the surface of a wet ingredient sitting in it. Garlic honey is the case where this matters most, and no validated domestic process exists for it.

Guide records that discuss this

• Hot honey and infused honeyHot honey is not a kind of honey. It is honey with chilli in it — a prepared food, made after the bees have finished, and one that behaves differently enough from plain honey that the usual reassurances about keeping do not all carry over.

Question records that discuss this

• Does hot honey go off, and how should it be stored?Store it like the honey it was made from — cool, dry, closed, out of the fridge — and follow the date on the jar rather than the folklore about honey lasting forever. A commercial, strained hot honey is stable and dated. A homemade one containing fresh chilli or anything else wet is a short-life preparation, because the low water content that preserves plain honey is exactly what a wet ingredient undoes.