Milk vetch honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

fresh legume flower, light blossom, clean wax

Flavour

clean sweetness, a soft floral note, faint green vegetal

Finish

Short and gentle.

Flavour character

• Floral and fruity — floral
• Green and herbal — vegetal
• Warm and cooked — buttery

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

1. Water white0–8 mm — this honey
2. Extra white8–17 mm — this honey
3. White17–34 mm — this honey
4. Extra light amber34–50 mm
5. Light amber50–85 mm
6. Amber85–114 mm
7. Dark amber114+ mm

Very pale, sometimes with a faint amber tinge in heavier crops.

On setting: Sets to a smooth fine white cream.

Texture

Runny; Soft set; Creamed

Crystallisation

Moderate, step 3 of 5, from very slow to very fast

Moderate — granulates over a few months; sets with a fine crystal.

Granulates over a few months with very fine crystals, giving a smooth rather than gritty set.

Typical composition

Moisture

16–20% (typically 17.8%)

Fructose

37–42% (typically 39.5%)

Glucose

31–37% (typically 34%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.79–0.96 (typically 0.87)

pH

3.6–4.4 (typically 4)

Electrical conductivity

0.1–0.3 mS/cm (typically 0.19 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

Astragalus sinicus, sown into rice paddies in autumn and turned in as green manure in spring. Not to be confused with the Astragalus species used in Chinese herbal medicine, which is a different plant.

Origins

The Yangtze basin and southern China — Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Zhejiang — and southern Japan, where it is known as renge honey.

Origin pages

• Turkey
• China
• Central Asia
• Iran

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

Typical harvest

March to May (northern hemisphere)

Three to five weeks, and it ends abruptly when the fields are ploughed for rice — the flow is terminated by a tractor rather than by the weather.

A typical window for the honey type, HoneyHQ synthesis — not a calendar for any one place.

The bees

A vast, concentrated and dependable flow, and the anchor of migratory beekeeping across southern China. Colonies build enormously on it before moving north for the later crops.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Filtered, Creamed (seeded and controlled-set), Coarsely strained

What to do with it

The everyday honey of large parts of east Asia, and good at it. Mild, smooth-setting and versatile.

At the tableSpreadingIn hot drinksBakingDesserts

Pairings

• Green tea

  Mild enough not to interfere with a delicate infusion.

• Plain yoghurt

  Sweetness and body with nothing competing.

• Toast and plain breads

  The fine smooth set spreads well.

Similar honeys and substitutes

Three different questions with different answers: a honey that tastes alike can behave differently in a recipe, and the same set texture says nothing about flavour. Each list is chosen from the recorded fields that matter to its question — and, where tasting panels or specifications described both honeys, the terms they share — and every suggestion says which, and what will be different. Compare it side by side or build a tasting flight.

History and traditional use

The crop's decline is worth recording. Chinese milk vetch acreage has fallen sharply as chemical fertiliser replaced green manure across Chinese rice systems, and one of the largest honey flows in the world has shrunk with it — the same pattern that removed sainfoin honey from Europe, at a much larger scale.