Cardamom honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

cardamom, eucalyptus, warm resin, green leaf

Flavour

cardamom, light caramel, citrus peel, cooling finish

Finish

Long and cooling, with a clear cardamom echo.

Intensity

Pronounced

Sweetness

Sweet

Bitterness

None

Acidity

Moderate

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)toLight amber (50-85 mm Pfund)

Pale gold, clear and bright.

On setting: Sets to a fine pale grain.

Texture

Runny; Soft set

Crystallisation

Moderate — granulates over a few months

Sets over a few months to an even grain.

Typical composition

Moisture

18–22% (typically 20%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.85–1.05 (typically 0.95)

pH

3.6–4.3 (typically 3.9)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey. High moisture is characteristic and is a genuine problem — monsoon honey from the Ghats ferments readily and needs prompt drying or refrigeration.

What these mean: the sugars and the ratio · moisture · conductivity · how each is measured

Where it comes from

Floral source

Elettaria cardamomum, grown under forest shade in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and at large scale in Guatemala.

Origins

The Cardamom Hills of Kerala and Tamil Nadu above all, with production in Sri Lanka and Guatemala.

Origin pages

• India
• Asia
• Sri Lanka
• Guatemala

Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.

Harvest

May to July (northern hemisphere)

Flowering runs through the early monsoon, which makes flying weather rather than flower availability the limiting factor.

The bees

Cardamom yield rises substantially where honey bee colonies are present, and estates stock hives for that reason. Apis cerana is the principal pollinator across the Indian growing regions, and the collapse of cerana colonies to Thai sacbrood virus in the 1990s caused a measurable drop in cardamom yields.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained, Raw

Produced in small quantities as a by-product of pollination management, and rarely leaves southern India.

What to do with it

A dessert and drinks honey. Its aromatics are volatile and it is wasted in anything cooked for long.

At the tableDessertsIn hot drinksDressingsDrizzling

Pairings

• Rice pudding and milk dessertsClassic

  Cardamom is the standard flavouring for South Asian milk desserts, and the honey supplies both the spice and the sweetness.

• CoffeeClassic

  Cardamom coffee is a fixture from Arabia to Kerala, and this honey is the shortest route to it.

• Poached pears

  A cooling spice honey over gently cooked orchard fruit, stirred in off the heat.

History and traditional use

The Cardamom Hills have been trading spice since antiquity, and the arrival of managed pollination is very recent by comparison — the honey is a modern by-product of a very old crop.

• Used in Kerala in the same milk-and-spice preparations the seed goes into.

Traditional use records that people have done something, and for how long. It is not evidence that it works.