Honey comes into modern cookery in various ways, as it should. And before Mrs Beeton, before the many cross-channel TV cooks, before our own incomparable Darina Allen, there was honey. Some proponents claim maybe too much for it, some sceptics in the wings say that it's only sugar, after all. But it is interesting to note how much it has been a part of Irish diet for many centuries back. Thus Fergus Kelly in his endlessly absorbing book Early Irish Farming (Dublin Institute for Higher Studies) has much to tell us about the delicious substance. His study is based mainly on the law texts of the 7th and 8th centuries, but that should not deter anyone, for he deals with cattle and sheep and goats and pigs and hens and dogs and cats as well as labour and land tenure - the lot. Including honey. Honey, he tells us, is mentioned far back as a tarsunn or relish in a medical law text. But it was not just something to add flavour.
It could be a useful foodstuff, in its own right, the book goes, for it contains energising carbohydrates, as well as proteins, minerals and vitamins (though only in small quantities). Not that vitamins were known all those hundreds of years ago, but the medics of the time knew what was good for us. And mead was made by fermenting honey with water. Perhaps our earliest intoxicant.
Often mentioned at the time, says the book and of more prestige than beer. Malt and honey could also be mixed to make an alcoholic drink called brocoit or bragget. And a good chef then, cooking meat on a spit over a fire of ashwood, rubbed honey and salt into the beef or mutton or ham and, in one case at least, we are told, the chef was so deft at turning the spit that not one drop of the juices fell into the fire, and all the flavour stayed in the meat. Fascinating on dietary matters, including a section on taboo foods among various racial or religious groups. There was a ban on eating horse-meat, not always observed by the early church in Ireland, writes the author.
The section on cooking is only one smallish part of a volume of some 700 pages. Dr Kelly dedicates the book, good man, to Frank Mitchell.
If you would like to learn about bee-keeping and you live in or near Dublin, the Co Dublin Beekeepers' Association is holding its 1999 beginners' course starting on Tuesday 9th next in the Litton Hall, Wesley House, Leeson Park, Dublin 6, at the junction with Northbrook Road. It starts at 8 p.m. Cost: £15 for course. Ring Ms Anne O'Sullivan, Dublin 2888873, to book a place.