Cashew honey
Tangy and resinous with a warm caramel base and a faintly astringent finish — assertive and quite unlike the mild nut it comes from.
A honey from cashew orchards in West Africa, Brazil, India and Vietnam, from a tree that depends heavily on insect pollination and produces a very substantial nectar flow. It is dark, tangy and slightly resinous, and cashew is one of the crops where the economic case for beekeeping alongside the orchard is clearest.
Flavour and aroma
- Aroma
- resin, tart fruit, caramel, green wood
- Flavour
- tangy fruit, resin, caramel, astringency
- Finish
- Long, tangy and drying.
- Intensity
- Pronounced
- Sweetness
- Moderately sweet
- Bitterness
- Trace
- Acidity
- Bright
Colour, texture and crystallisation
- Colour
- Amber (85-114 mm Pfund)Dark amber (over 114 mm Pfund)
Deep amber to reddish-brown.
On setting: Sets to a dark opaque tan.
- Texture
- Thick but pourable; Runny; Soft set
- Crystallisation
Moderate — granulates over a few months
A moderate set with a medium grain.
Typical composition
- Moisture
- 17–22% (typically 19%)
- Fructose
- 35–41% (typically 38%)
- Glucose
- 28–34% (typically 31%)
- pH
- 3.5–4.4 (typically 3.9)
- Electrical conductivity
- 0.4–1 mS/cm (typically 0.6 mS/cm)
These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey.
What these mean: the sugars and the ratio · moisture · conductivity · how each is measured
Where it comes from
- Floral source
- Anacardium occidentale, cashew, grown in orchards across the tropics on poor sandy soils.
- Origins
- Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Brazil, India and Vietnam.
- Origin pages
Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.
- Harvest
- November to February (northern hemisphere)
A dry-season flow, with timing varying by hemisphere and region.
- The bees
- Cashew is strongly dependent on insect pollination and nut set rises substantially where bees are present. This makes cashew one of the crops where hive placement is genuinely worth paying for, and beekeeping and cashew production are increasingly promoted together in West Africa.
- Usual processing
- Raw, Coarsely strained, Spun (centrifugally extracted), Cut comb
Cashew orchards on poor sandy soils across West Africa are expanding fast, and the honey resource with them. Insecticide use during flowering is the principal risk to colonies.
What to do with it
Its acidity and weight make it a cooking honey. It glazes well and stands up in savoury sauces.
At the tableGlazing and roastingMarinadesBakingWith cheese
Pairings
- Cashews and roasted nuts
The honey and the nut from the same tree, though they taste rather different.
- Grilled chicken and pork
Acidity and resin work on grilled meat.
- Aged cheeses
Tang against salt.
Pairing pages this honey appears on
Selected by this honey’s own recorded intensity, flavour families and uses rather than by anything written above — each page prints the rule that put it there.
Where this honey sits in the catalogue
History and traditional use
Cashew is native to northeastern Brazil and was carried to India and East Africa by Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century. West Africa is now the largest producing region, and the honey has followed the orchards.
Sources
- Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production — Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2016) · Systematic review Link
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
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