Which honey has the strongest flavour?

The strongest honeys, and what makes each strong

• Strawberry tree (corbezzolo) — extreme bitterness from phenolic compounds. Coffee grounds and burnt caramel, and barely sweet.
• Oak honeydew — the highest mineral content of any honey commonly sold, and a savoury, almost salty finish more like a stock than a sweetener.
• Chestnut — tannic bitterness, dark and long-finishing. The European benchmark for a bitter honey.
• Buckwheat — molasses, malt and a distinctly barnyard note that people either love or call a fault.
• Carob — dark, savoury and faintly cheesy, from a tree whose flowers smell genuinely unpleasant.
• Avocado — molasses and a saline savoury edge, and nothing whatsoever of the fruit.
• Mad honey — bitter, astringent and genuinely toxic. Included for completeness rather than as a recommendation.

How to use a strong honey

Give it something to push against. A strong honey against a mild food simply obliterates it; against salt, fat, acidity or bitterness it does the most interesting work honey can do. Chestnut with pecorino, oak honeydew with feta, buckwheat in gingerbread, avocado in a barbecue glaze — in each case the honey is functioning as an ingredient rather than as sweetening.

They are also the honeys that survive cooking. An aromatic honey's character is volatile and heat destroys it; a strong honey's character is structural — malt, mineral, bitterness — and comes through an oven intact.