Why does honey taste of flowers?

What actually carries over

Nectar contains far more than sugar: trace amino acids, organic acids, phenolic compounds, minerals and volatile aromatics, all specific to the plant. Bees add enzymes and remove most of the water, and the volatiles that survive that process are what a taster reads as the floral character. Some are destroyed by the ripening, some by storage, and some were never there in the quantity people assume.

• Lavender honey carries the plant's own perfume almost intact — one of the clearest cases of nectar chemistry surviving into flavour.
• Orange blossom carries neroli and citrus-peel aromatics that persist well past the swallow.
• Cherry and almond honeys taste of marzipan because benzaldehyde comes through, the same compound behind almond extract.
• Meadowfoam tastes of toasted marshmallow and vanilla, and the compound responsible has actually been identified — which is rarer in honey chemistry than it should be.
• Buckwheat and chestnut taste dark and bitter because phenolic compounds and tannins come through, which is the same mechanism producing a completely different result.

Where the intuition misleads

Heat is the other thing to know. Aromatic character is volatile, and cooking, pasteurising or repeatedly warming a honey removes exactly the compounds that made it taste of anything. A floral honey that has been heated is an expensive way to buy sugar.