Coriander honey
Warm and spicy with an unmistakable coriander-seed aroma over a caramel base — one of the most immediately recognisable honeys there is.
धनिया शहद
A honey from coriander grown as a seed crop across central India and parts of eastern Europe, and one of the few honeys that carries an unmistakable spice character. It smells and tastes distinctly of coriander seed, which makes it one of the easiest honeys to identify blind and one of the more interesting to cook with.
Flavour and aroma
- Aroma
- coriander seed, warm spice, citrus peel, caramel
- Flavour
- coriander, warm spice, caramel, faint citrus
- Finish
- Long and spicy.
- Intensity
- Pronounced
- Sweetness
- Sweet
- Bitterness
- None
- Acidity
- Moderate
Colour, texture and crystallisation
- Colour
- Light amber (50-85 mm Pfund)Amber (85-114 mm Pfund)
Warm golden amber.
On setting: Sets to a smooth pale gold.
- Texture
- Runny; Thick but pourable; Soft set
- Crystallisation
Moderate — granulates over a few months
A moderate fine set. Umbellifer honeys are generally middling in crystallisation behaviour.
Typical composition
- Moisture
- 15–19% (typically 17%)
- Fructose
- 36–41% (typically 38%)
- Glucose
- 30–36% (typically 33%)
- pH
- 3.6–4.4 (typically 4)
- Electrical conductivity
- 0.2–0.6 mS/cm (typically 0.35 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
- Coriandrum sativum, grown at field scale for seed in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, and in Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
- Origins
- India principally, and southern Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
- Origin pages
Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.
- Harvest
- January to April (northern hemisphere)
A cool-season crop in India, flowering in the dry winter months.
- The bees
- Coriander benefits measurably from insect pollination, with higher seed set and heavier seed where bees are present. The relationship is genuinely two-way, which is not true of every crop honey.
- Usual processing
- Raw, Coarsely strained, Spun (centrifugally extracted), Filtered
Produced at scale in India and eastern Europe as a by-product of seed production. Volumes are substantial and prices modest, which makes it one of the better-value characterful honeys.
What to do with it
Genuinely useful in cooking. It glazes lamb and carrots beautifully and it belongs in a marinade far more than on toast.
At the tableGlazing and roastingMarinadesBakingWith cheeseSauces
Pairings
- Roast carrots and root vegetablesClassic
Coriander and carrot are the same family and taste like it.
- Lamb and merguezClassic
Warm spice on grilled meat.
- Spiced cakes and gingerbread
The honey supplies spice as well as sweetness.
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
Coriander is among the oldest cultivated spices, recorded in Egyptian tombs and in Linear B tablets. Its honey has always been incidental to the seed.
Sources
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
- Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production — Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2016) · Systematic review Link
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides that cover this honey
- The best honey for teaThe right honey for tea is one that sweetens without burying the infusion. That rules out most of the honeys people find exciting, and it makes the choice depend on which tea you are drinking.
- The best honey for savoury cookingIn savoury cooking honey is doing three jobs at once — sweetening, browning and balancing acid — and the honeys that do them best are the ones nobody wants on toast.
Tools for choosing and using honey
- Honey finder
Which honey should I buy for what I actually want to do with it?
- Flavour selector
I like this taste — which honeys have it?
- Honey comparison
How do these honeys actually differ, beyond colour?
- Honey substitute calculator
How much honey do I use instead of sugar, and what else has to change?
- Storage guide
How should I store honey, and what do I do when it sets?