Hyssop honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

camphor, mint, warm stone, dried herb

Flavour

mint, eucalypt edge, light caramel, dry herb

Finish

Long and cooling, with a faint camphor echo.

Intensity

Pronounced

Sweetness

Sweet

Bitterness

Trace

Acidity

Moderate

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

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

Bright pale gold, very clear.

On setting: Sets to a fine even cream.

Texture

Runny; Soft set

Crystallisation

Moderate — granulates over a few months

Sets over a few months to a smooth fine grain, in the manner of the Mediterranean herb honeys generally.

Typical composition

Moisture

15–18% (typically 16.5%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.85–1.05 (typically 0.95)

pH

3.6–4.2 (typically 3.9)

Electrical conductivity

0.2–0.45 mS/cm (typically 0.3 mS/cm)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey. Low moisture is characteristic of honeys made in hot dry summers, and hyssop is a dry-country plant.

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

Where it comes from

Floral source

Hyssopus officinalis. Grown as a medicinal and culinary herb across southern Europe and naturalised widely.

Origins

Southern France, Italy, the Balkans and southern Russia, and produced wherever the herb is grown at any scale.

Origin pages

• The Mediterranean
• Europe
• Russia

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

Harvest

July to September (northern hemisphere)

A long summer flowering that continues through drought, which is exactly when most border plants stop.

The bees

A shallow-tubed mint-family flower accessible to short-tongued bees as well as long, which is why hyssop is worked by such a wide range of species compared with the deeper sages.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained

Produced in small quantities where hyssop is grown as a crop, and more often as a component of a garrigue multifloral than as a monofloral.

What to do with it

Strong enough for cheese and for lamb, and good in a herbal tea where its own aromatics reinforce the infusion. Use less than instinct suggests — the camphor note crosses into medicinal at a low threshold.

At the tableWith cheeseIn hot drinksDressingsMarinadesDesserts

Pairings

• Hard sheep's cheeseClassic

  A herb honey against a salty aged cheese is the standard Mediterranean pairing, and the camphor edge stops it from being merely sweet.

• Roast lamb

  The honey carries terpenes from the same family of herbs that get rubbed on the meat, so the pairing is chemically continuous rather than merely conventional.

• Mint tea

  Menthol operates on a different channel from taste, which leaves the honey's own aromatics unusually audible.

History and traditional use

The hyssop of the Bible is almost certainly a different plant — probably Syrian oregano — and the name was transferred to this species much later. The confusion is old enough to be worth stating whenever the plant is discussed.

• A monastery garden staple across medieval Europe, grown for cordials, for bitters and for the still-room.

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