HoneyHQ

Tamarisk honey

Dark and mineral with a malty depth and a distinct faint saltiness that reflects the ground — an unusual and genuinely savoury honey.

Mixed floral and honeydewPronouncedMineral and salineMaltyMolasses and treacle

عسل الطرفاء

A honey from tamarisk, the salt-tolerant desert shrub of North Africa and the Middle East, and one with a genuine biblical footnote — the sweet secretions of scale insects on Sinai tamarisk are the most widely accepted natural candidate for the manna of Exodus. The honey is largely honeydew, dark and mineral, and it comes from ground where almost nothing grows.

Flavour and aroma

Aroma
malt, dry earth, molasses, faint salt
Flavour
mineral, malt, caramel, light salinity
Finish
Long, savoury and mineral.
Intensity
Pronounced
Sweetness
Moderately sweet
Bitterness
Trace
Acidity
Low

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour
Amber (85-114 mm Pfund)Dark amber (over 114 mm Pfund)

Dark amber to brown.

Texture
Thick but pourable; Runny; Soft set
Crystallisation

Slow — months before it starts to granulate

Slow to set, consistent with a substantial honeydew component.

Typical composition

Moisture
14–18% (typically 16%)
Fructose
32–39% (typically 35%)
Glucose
26–33% (typically 29%)
pH
3.9–5 (typically 4.4)
Electrical conductivity
0.5–1.3 mS/cm (typically 0.8 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
Tamarix species on desert wadi, oasis margin and saline ground. The resource is a mixture of the shrub's own small flowers and honeydew from scale insects feeding on it.
Origins
Egypt, Sinai, Israel, Jordan, Iran, Central Asia and North Africa.
Origin pages

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

Harvest
May to August (northern hemisphere)

The scale insect season in the desert summer, with the shrub's own flowering contributing earlier.

The bees
Bees work both the small flowers and the honeydew. Ants take a large share of the same resource, which is why the manna described in Exodus had to be gathered early in the morning.
Usual processing
Raw, Coarsely strained, Spun (centrifugally extracted), Cut comb

Tamarisk is planted extensively for windbreaks and dune stabilisation across the region, which has enlarged the resource considerably. In North America it is a serious invasive of riverine systems.

What to do with it

Its salinity and low sweetness make it a savoury honey. It works with cheese and on roast meat and is odd on toast.

At the tableWith cheeseGlazing and roastingMarinades

Pairings

  • Salty sheep cheeses

    Salt on salt, with the malt bridging.

  • Roast lamb

    Mineral honey on rich meat.

  • Dates

    A desert pairing that works.

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

The identification of tamarisk honeydew with biblical manna was proposed in the nineteenth century and investigated in detail in the 1920s and 1930s. It remains the leading naturalistic explanation, which is a different thing from being established.

  • The sweet exudate of Sinai tamarisk has been gathered by Bedouin as mann and eaten, and is the most widely accepted natural explanation for the manna of Exodus.

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

Claims about this honey

Cultural belief

Held and repeated within a culture, and interesting as culture. No mechanism is asserted.

Cultural belief

Tamarisk honeydew is the leading naturalistic candidate for the manna described in Exodus.

The identification rests on the substance's appearance, its seasonal availability in Sinai, the need to gather it before the ants take it, and its sweetness. It has been argued in scholarly literature since the nineteenth century. It is recorded here as an interpretation of a religious text rather than as an established historical fact, because that is what it is — a plausible reading, not a demonstrated one.

  • The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore — Houghton Mifflin (1937) · Ethnographic record
  • The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text

Sources

  • The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
  • The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore — Houghton Mifflin (1937) · Ethnographic record

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

Tools for choosing and using honey

HoneyHQ saves your cookie choice on this device. Optional analytics run only if you accept — set a preference now, or change it later on the cookies page.