Creamed, set and whipped honey

The problem creaming solves

Most honey will crystallise. Left alone, it does so unpredictably: crystals form wherever a nucleus happens to exist — a dust particle, a pollen grain, a scratch in the jar — and grow as large as the available glucose allows. The result is often coarse, gritty, streaked with white patches, and separated, with a softer layer on top. None of this indicates anything wrong with the honey, and all of it looks like something wrong with the honey.

Creaming attacks the problem at its root. If you supply an enormous number of very small crystal nuclei at once, the glucose has to distribute itself among all of them, and no individual crystal can grow large. The honey still sets solid; it simply sets smooth.

How it is done

1. 1Prepare a seedA quantity of already-finely-crystallised honey is used as the seed — traditionally around five to ten per cent by weight of the batch. In the classic Dyce process this seed is milled or ground so the crystals are as small as possible.
2. 2Gently liquefy the base honeyThe honey to be creamed is warmed enough to dissolve any existing large crystals, then cooled. This is a modest warming, not pasteurisation — overheating at this stage damages the honey and defeats the purpose.
3. 3Blend in the seedThe seed is stirred through the cooled honey slowly and thoroughly, avoiding air. Stirring too vigorously introduces bubbles that will rise and form a white foam layer at the top of the jar.
4. 4Hold it coolThe jarred honey is held at around 14 °C, which is the temperature at which glucose crystallises fastest, for roughly a week. It sets throughout, uniformly and finely.

Which honeys cream well

The technique needs a honey that wants to crystallise finely. Glucose-rich honeys with a natural tendency to fine crystals are ideal, which is why the commercial creaming trade runs on the honeys it does.

Set, soft set and crystallised are not the same word

• Crystallised or granulated — set naturally, texture unmanaged, anywhere from smooth to gritty depending on the honey.
• Set — a general term for solid honey, used loosely for both natural and controlled sets.
• Soft set or creamed — deliberately seeded and controlled, spreadable, smooth, uniform.
• Whipped — the same as creamed, and a slightly misleading name.
• Spun — a processing term meaning centrifugally extracted from the comb. It describes how the honey left the hive, not its texture, and it appears in this list only because it is regularly confused with the others.