A guide to honey varieties: from acacia to honeydew honey 🍯

Hungarian acacia honey was added to the Hungarikum Collection (the official register of Hungarian national treasures) in 2014. For good reason: acacia (black locust) woods cover around 463,000 hectares in Hungary, a quarter of the country’s forest area, and roughly half of all Hungarian honey is acacia honey.

Acacia honey is pale, mild and sweet, and stays runny for a very long time. Interestingly, its natural sucrose content can be higher than that of other honeys, so a separate limit applies to it. It’s at its best in tea, lemonade, desserts and in mézes krémes (Hungarian honey cream slice).

Rapeseed honey is the first honey of the year: it crystallises to a creamy texture within days or weeks, which makes it easy to spread. Milkweed honey is pale like acacia honey but has a richer aroma and crystallises slowly – it’s best on its own, by the spoonful, and with fresh cheeses. Wildflower honey is made from the nectar of many different flowers, has a fuller flavour, and is our first choice for baking.

A common misconception: milkweed honey is not a Hungarikum – that title went to Hungarian acacia honey.

Chestnut honey is amber to dark brown, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. Pine honey isn’t a blossom honey at all: it’s a honeydew honey, meaning the bees collect not nectar but the sweet secretion of insects that feed on plant sap. In the lab, dark honeys can also be identified by their electrical conductivity, which is much higher than that of most blossom honeys.

Their bold flavour makes them a good match for meat, glazes and pumpkin: try them in honey-glazed spare ribs or honey-roasted pumpkin.