18th century mead references & recipes

Recipes below for “white mead” tend to be quick meads (some aging only a few days) before “it will be fit to drink.”

To make mead in the manuscript cookbook of D. Petre (1705)

How to make English Canary, no way inferior to the best of Spanish Wines, The True Amazons: or, The Monarchy of Bees (1713)

The Accomplished Housekeeper, and Universal Cook (1717): Mead Wine, Walnut Mead, Cowslip Mead

The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary (1723): To make Mead, Another Way, To make white Mead, To make strong Mead another way

Court Cookery (1725): How to make white Mead, To make Mead another Way

The Compleat City and Country Cook (1732): Mead, To make small white Mead

To make an Excellent Mead, answering to Sack, Sherry, or Mountain White-Wine in Instructions for Managing Bees (1733)

A Collection Of above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick, and Surgery (1734): White Mead, very good, To make strong Mead

The Whole Duty of a Woman (1737): To make Mead, To make small White Mead

The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book and Compleat Family Cook (1739): To make Mead, To make white Mead, To make white Mead, To make Mead

Of Vinous-Mead in A Treatise of all Sorts of Foods, Both Animal and Vegetable (1745)

Of the Way to make Mead in Of Husbandry (a 1745 translation from the ancient Latin)

“Two Receipts for making Mead, take also which ever of them you think best,” in The Practical Bee-Master (1747)

A Collection Of above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery (1749): White Mead, very Good, To make Strong Mead

Two recipes “to make mead” in Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats

The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book, And Compleat Family Cook (1760): To make Mead, To make White Mead

“To make STRONG MEAD” and “To make MEAD another Way” in English Housewifery (1760)

Of Mead in A New System of Practical Husbandry (1766)

The Experienced English House-keeper (1769): To make Sack Mead, To make Cowslip Mead, To make Walnut Mead

The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1774): How to make mead, To make white mead

The Experienced Bee-Keeper (1783): Of Mead, and Wines to be made with Honey, To make Mead, The way to promote, or check fermentation, The method of scenting casks with the match, To give Mead the flavor of Rhenish Wine, To give Mead the flavor of Frontiniac, To give Mead an agreeable roughness, To give Mead the flavor of Rasberries, Currants, &c. &c., To tincture Mead of a fine red colour, To cure Mead when it is foul or ropy, To recover Mead when it is flat, or fretting, Further Remarks on the making of Mead, &c.

The Experienced English Housekeeper (1786): To make Sack Mead, To make Cowslip Mead, To make Walnut Mead

The Lady’s Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table (1787): Mead Wine, an excellent Receipt, from a Lady, Another Way to make Mead, To make Small Mead

Mead Wine (including walnut mead and cowslip mead) in The English Art of Cookery (1788)

The Universal Cook and City and Country Housekeeper (1792): Mead Wines, White or Sack Mead, Walnut Mead, Cowslip Mead

Mead in Every Woman Her Own House-Keeper (1796)

To Make Mead in The Antient Bee-Master’s Farewell (1796)

Hydromel, or mead in The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph (1831)

Additional References

Bees and beekeeping in the 18th century

Bees in the Colonies – transcript of a podcast interview with apiarist Bill Krebs, a volunteer beekeeper at Colonial Williamsburg