Flavour selector
Start from a flavour you already like and work outwards to the honeys that carry it — and to the families that keep turning up alongside it.
34 of 265 honeys carry vegetal
What tends to come with it
Families that appear on the same records, commonest first. This is a count of co-occurrences in the catalogue, not a claim that the two tastes resemble each other — it answers “if you like this, what else is usually in the jar”.
- Floral (21)
- Caramel (10)
- Buttery (9)
- Waxy (7)
- Herbaceous (6)
- Phenolic and medicinal (4)
- Nutty (3)
- Fruity (2)
- Mineral and saline (1)
- Molasses and treacle (1)
- Smoky (1)
- Spicy (1)
- Woody (1)
All 34 honeys
In catalogue order. Nothing here is ranked — no honey is a better answer than another until you say what you want it for.
- Rapeseed honeySweet and very mild, faintly cabbage-like when fresh and cleanly bland once set. Texture is what it has instead of flavour.VegetalButtery
- Borage honeyVery light and very clean, with a faint cucumber-fresh note that fades with age. Sweetness without commentary.VegetalFloralButtery
- Ivy honeyStrong, faintly bitter and distinctly herbal — closer to a dark honey in character than its pale colour suggests.HerbaceousVegetalMineral and saline
- Sulla honeyVery delicate and clean, with a soft almond-and-fresh-grass note and almost no aftertaste.FloralNuttyVegetal
- Asphodel honeyDelicate and softly perfumed with a fresh, almost vegetal lift and a silky weight that gives it more presence than the flavour alone would.FloralVegetalButtery
- Milk vetch honeySoft, mild and slightly floral with a faint green-bean freshness — an unassuming honey made in enormous quantity.FloralVegetalButtery
- Snowberry honeyMild and clean with a soft floral sweetness and a faint green note — pleasant and unassertive.FloralVegetal
- Sunflower honeyStraw, beeswax and pollen, with a slightly waxy mouthfeel and a fresh, faintly herbal edge.VegetalWaxyHerbaceous
- Alfalfa honeyMild, clean and slightly grassy, with a beeswax note and very little else. A background honey, and good at being one.FloralWaxyVegetal
- Blueberry honeyTangy and lightly fruity with a green, slightly astringent edge — recognisably related to the berry without tasting of jam.FruityCaramelVegetal
- Mustard honeyVery sweet and very mild with a faint pungent brassica note when fresh, fading to clean blandness as it ages and sets.VegetalButtery
- Cotton honeyMild and clean with a faint green-vegetal note and very little else — a background honey.VegetalWaxyFloral
- Rubber tree honeyMild and slightly vegetal with a light caramel warmth — an unremarkable flavour attached to a genuinely remarkable production story.VegetalCaramelFloral
- Field bean honeyMild and clean with a faint green-bean vegetal note under a soft sweetness — pleasant and undemanding rather than distinctive.FloralVegetal
- Strawberry tree honeyAggressively bitter — coffee grounds, artichoke and burnt sugar, with the sweetness arriving late and briefly. Nothing in food prepares most people for it.Phenolic and medicinalSmokyVegetalWoody
- Tea blossom honeyMild and creamy with a distinct faint bitterness and a green vegetal note that is recognisably tea-like — an unusual profile and a divisive one.VegetalHerbaceousButtery
- Neem honeyDistinctly bitter with a herbal, faintly medicinal character over a restrained sweetness — one of the least conventionally pleasant honeys in the catalogue, and deliberately so.HerbaceousPhenolic and medicinalVegetal
- Willow honeyMild, faintly green and quick to set. A spring honey in the literal sense, and one most beekeepers taste and few buyers ever see.VegetalWaxyFloral
- Pear blossom honeyVery light and faintly green, with a clean sweetness and almost nothing behind it. Notable chiefly for how hard it is to get.VegetalFloralFruity
- Field maple honeyFresh and faintly green with a warm caramel base — a spring honey with rather more body than its colour suggests.CaramelVegetalWaxy
- Motherwort honeyClean and lightly herbal with a faint bitterness at the end — a summer honey that tastes of the plant rather than of sugar.HerbaceousCaramelVegetal
- Cardoon honeySavoury and faintly bitter, with a warm caramel body and an unmistakable green-vegetable note that is genuinely artichoke-like.VegetalCaramelNuttyPhenolic and medicinal
- Hedgerow honeyWarm, floral and slightly grassy, with a caramel base. A good hedgerow honey is a genuinely complex thing that happens not to have a Latin name.FloralCaramelVegetalWaxy
- Spring blossom honeyMild, creamy and clean, with a faint cabbagey note where rape dominates. An easy honey and a spreadable one.FloralButteryVegetal
- Moringa honeyGreen, peppery and faintly vegetal over a light sweetness — recognisably related to the mustard-oil chemistry running through the whole plant.VegetalSpicyFloral
- Oil-tea camellia honeyPale, thin and distinctly bitter, with an astringent tea-like finish. Not a beginner's honey and not really a pleasure honey.VegetalPhenolic and medicinalFloral
- Pagoda tree honeyLight, clean and gently floral with a faint green edge — an unassertive honey produced in very large quantities.FloralVegetalButtery
- Niger seed honeyGolden, clean and gently grassy, with a soft finish. Closer to sunflower honey than to the darker forest honeys of the same country.FloralCaramelVegetal
- Oil palm honeyVariable by definition. Generally warm and mildly caramel-led, taking its character from whatever grew between and around the palms.CaramelFloralVegetal
- Soybean honeyVery pale and very mild, with a clean light sweetness and almost nothing to distinguish it. Its virtue is neutrality.FloralButteryVegetal
- Safflower honeyLight amber and mildly nutty, with a faint thistle bitterness at the finish. Unassertive and rather more interesting than most crop honeys.NuttyCaramelVegetal
- Carrot seed honeyDark, savoury and faintly medicinal, with a green umbellifer note and a slightly bitter finish. A challenging honey and an interesting one.VegetalMolasses and treacleHerbaceous
- Tiaca honeySoft, floral and clean — gentler and less aromatic than ulmo from the same forest, and easier to eat in quantity.FloralCaramelVegetal
- Five finger honeyMild, faintly green and slightly waxy, setting hard and pale. A working honey rather than a prestige one.VegetalWaxyFloral
- Flavour families are editorial groupings, and the boundaries between them are matters of judgement rather than fact.
- It does not model intensity of a family, only its presence — a honey with a trace of smoke and one dominated by it both match 'smoky'.
- Adjacency is co-occurrence in this catalogue, not similarity of taste. It answers what tends to be in the jar together, which is a different question from what tastes alike.
- The map shifts as the catalogue grows, which is correct and does mean a link shared today may show slightly different neighbours next year.
The vocabulary under each family
HoneyHQ’s six groups and eighteen families, with the reference terms the International Honey Commission’s trained panels use and the terms official honey specifications add. A term is a link only where a source has named it in a honey in the catalogue; the rest are vocabulary, shown so you can see what the family covers.
Floral and fruity
- Floral
- orange blossom
- violet
- rose
- hyacinth
- Fruity
- pear
- apple
- red fruit
- blackcurrant
- coconut
- apricot
- exotic fruit
- dates
- prunes
- figs
- raisins
- candied fruit
- dried fruit
- overripe apple
- Citrus
- lemon
- orange
- grapefruit
Green and herbal
Warm and cooked
Woody and resinous
- Resinous
- cedar
- pine resin
- propolis
- fresh conifer wood
- spruce-tip syrup
- balsamic
- Woody
- leafy wood
- dust
- Smoky
Spicy and sharp
- Spicy
- clove
- nutmeg
- coffee
- Phenolic and medicinal
- styrene
- paint
- solvent
- household soap
- vitamin b1
Earthy and mineral
- Mineral and saline
- damp cloth
- humus
- stuffy
- Waxy
- Animal and barnyard
- piquant cheese
- vinegar
- cheese
- perspiration
- cowshed
- cat urine