Q.
Sweet as honey. A taste of honey. A honey of a deal. You’re my honey (as long as you complete your ‘to do’ list.)  How did honey, of all the sugary alternatives, come to epitomize the ultimate, love-worthy sweetness?

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A.

Sweet, sweet honey finds it place in the Bible’s Book of Exodus. ‘And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.’

Many believe this wonder food of the bees offers edible magic beyond its natural sweetness. Honey will give you wisdom if, said Zeus, you start eating it young and if, adds Pythagoras, you eat it a lot.

Not all were fans of humans eating honey.  In her much-read Hildegard’s Healing Plants, Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen wrote: ‘If a person who is fat and has thick flesh eats honey often, it prepares decay in the person. If a person who is thin and dry eats cooked honey, the person is harmed by it. If a person eats the honeycomb wax, it makes them melancholy and thus harms them. It makes them heavy and thus increases their melancholy.’.

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Cup of Honey. Konstantin Makovsky. 1890

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Romans, however, would put honey in their sacrifices to becalm the god of the underworld so he wouldn’t terrorize them with volcanic lava. Folk myths said that if you rub your eyes (not recommended) and lips with this liquid bee goodness, you would forever change the way you see and speak. Linked to immortality, honey was used in ancient funeral rituals. The dead were even buried with honey to savour in the next life. Oh, and it’s also supposed to be an aphrodisiac.

It’s a lot.

In Jerry Thomas’ 1862 ‘How to Mix Drinks,’ we find a honey-rich recipe for a giant vat of ‘Nectar of Olympus.’

Nectar of Olympus
2 lbs of honey
1 do. coriander seed
1/2 do. fresh lemon peel
2 ounces of cloves
4 do. styrax calamita
4 do. benzoin

Here’s hoping you have a cavernous basement… We are directed to ground and cut the ingredients before macerating the concoction for 2 weeks with 3.5 gallons of 95% alcohol and 3.5 gallons of water. After the time has passed, we are to distil 3 gallons of the flavored spirit from the water. Then add 8 ounces of orange water, 1.5 drachm of tincture of vanilla, and 30 pounds of sugar (!) dissolved in 5.5 gallons of water. Color the potion deep red, says Thomas, then enjoy.

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Header Art: Olivie Strauss

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