Honey in savoury cooking

Fructose begins to caramelise around 110 °C, against roughly 160 °C for sucrose. That single fact explains most honey failures in a hot oven or under a grill: a honey glaze applied at the start of a roast will be black before the meat is done. The rule that follows is mechanical — glaze in the last ten to fifteen minutes, or at a lower temperature for longer.

Honey's acidity does real work in a marinade. At pH 3.4 to 4.5 it is roughly as acidic as a light vinegar, so it contributes to tenderising alongside whatever else is in the bowl, while its sugars pull moisture into the surface of the meat. That is why a honey marinade behaves differently from a sugar-and-vinegar one even when the sweetness is identical.

Delicate honeys are wasted here and there is no argument to be had about it. Prolonged heat destroys the volatile aromatics that separate an expensive honey from a cheap one, and what survives is sweetness and whatever non-volatile character the honey has — malt, bitterness, mineral, smoke. Buckwheat, chestnut, the honeydews and the strong eucalypts hold up; acacia and orange blossom do not.

The one savoury context where a fine honey is not wasted is the finishing drizzle: over roasted vegetables off the heat, over grilled halloumi, into a dressing that never sees a pan. There the aroma survives because nothing has cooked it away.