This one starts with a piece of honeycomb rather than a jar, and the first thing that happens is you get the honey out of it. Warm the comb gently with the lemon juice and the wax lets go, floats, and lifts off in a sheet. What you are left with is honey that has never been heated hard, filtered, or blended across a hundred hives, whisked into yogurt and olive oil into something sweet, sharp and genuinely creamy.

The wax does not go into the dressing. That is the whole technique and it is worth saying plainly, because beeswax does not dissolve, does not emulsify, and turns hard and unpleasant the moment the dressing goes cold. About twenty minutes, most of it waiting for the comb to give up the honey, and it dresses four.

Equipment

The comb wants gentle, controlled warmth and nothing more, because honey held too hot loses the aromatics you bought the comb for in the first place. A small heavy pan over the lowest heat gives you that margin, so I use the 2 Quart Sauce Pan with Lid Set, which is small enough that a few ounces of comb and lemon juice actually cover the base rather than scorching in a thin film. Once the honey is strained you are building an emulsion of oil into yogurt, and that wants wires rather than a spoon, so the Stainless Steel Whisk Egg Beater does the work. Honey is worth weighing rather than measuring, since it clings to a spoon and you lose a surprising amount of it, so I strain straight into the Large Capacity Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl with Scale and build the dressing in the same bowl I weighed into.

You will also need a fine mesh strainer or a square of cheesecloth to catch the wax. I do not stock either, and there is no way around it: a colander's holes are far too big and the wax will go straight through into your dressing.

Ingredients

• 4 ounces honeycomb, to yield about 3 tablespoons strained honey
• 1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest, finely grated
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
• Kosher salt, to taste

Ingredient Selection

Buy comb honey from someone who can tell you what the bees were on. That is the entire reason to go to this trouble: comb honey is single-source and unblended by definition, so a clover comb and a wildflower comb taste properly different, where supermarket honey is blended flat on purpose. It is sold as a cut square in a tub, usually four ounces or so.

Four ounces of comb will not give you four ounces of honey, because a meaningful share of the weight is wax. Rather than have you guess, the recipe is written around the output: you want 3 tablespoons of strained honey. Weigh or measure what comes out, and if you are short, top it up with ordinary honey. The nutrition figures below are calculated on 3 tablespoons of honey, so topping up keeps them accurate.

Plain whole-milk yogurt, not Greek and not low-fat. Greek yogurt is strained and much thicker, which makes a dressing you have to spoon rather than pour, and low-fat versions go thin and sour without the fat to carry the honey. If Greek is what you have, thin it with a tablespoon of water.

The lemon is doing two jobs and both matter. Its juice releases the honey from the comb during warming, and its acid keeps the finished dressing from reading as simply sweet. Zest the lemon before you juice it, which is the order that is physically possible and the one people forget.

Method

Mise en Place

1. Zest the lemon, then juice it: Take the zest off first with a fine grater, avoiding the white pith underneath, which is bitter. Then juice the lemon and set the zest aside separately.

Release the Honey

1. Warm the comb with the lemon juice over the lowest heat: Cut or break the comb into the pan, add the lemon juice, and set it over the lowest heat you have. Leave it until the wax softens and the honey runs freely, which takes several minutes. Keep it barely warm to the touch and never let it simmer; honey driven hot loses the aroma that made comb worth buying.
2. Strain the wax off and weigh what you have: Pour everything through a fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth into the bowl, pressing the softened wax gently against the mesh to release the last of it. Discard the wax. You are looking for about 3 tablespoons of honey; top up with ordinary honey if you are short.

Build the Dressing

1. Whisk the yogurt, mustard and zest into the warm honey: Add them while the honey and lemon are still warm, which is the easiest moment to get honey to combine rather than sink and sit in a layer at the bottom. Whisk until completely uniform.
2. Stream in the olive oil: Pour it in slowly while whisking continuously, until the dressing turns glossy and slightly thickened. Poured in all at once it will sit on the surface instead of emulsifying.

Season and Chill

1. Add the pepper, taste, then chill at least 30 minutes: Whisk in the black pepper and taste before adding any salt, since a little salt sharpens honey considerably and it is easy to overshoot. It thickens as it cools, so judge the final texture cold rather than warm.

Serving and Application

This suits the salads that fight a sharp vinaigrette: bitter leaves like radicchio, endive and frisee, anything with fruit in it, and spinach with nuts and soft cheese. It is also good on a grain bowl and genuinely good spooned over roasted carrots or squash while they are still hot. Because it is sweet, use less than you would of a vinaigrette.

Popular Variations

• Jarred honey version: Skip the warming and straining entirely and whisk 3 tablespoons of ordinary honey straight in. Faster, and perfectly good, though blended supermarket honey is what the comb was meant to improve on.
• Poppy seed dressing: Whisk a teaspoon of poppy seeds in at the end. A classic pairing with honey and lemon, and it suits fruit salads particularly.
• Herbed: Fold in a tablespoon of chopped fresh mint or tarragon after chilling. Both work against honey; mint leans it summery and tarragon leans it savory.
• Dairy-free: Replace the yogurt with an equal amount of coconut yogurt. It stays creamy and the coconut is not out of place against honey.

Make Ahead, Storage and Reheating

This is a yogurt dressing, so it is perishable from the moment it is made. Into a clean airtight container and into the refrigerator at 40F or below straight away, and use it within about five days, which is the yogurt's limit rather than the honey's. Honey itself effectively does not spoil; everything else here does.

It will thicken in the cold and may separate a little, both normal. Whisk it back together and let it sit out a few minutes before dressing anything. It does not freeze; yogurt goes grainy on thawing and does not recover.

One thing that matters more than any of the above. Honey can contain the bacteria that cause botulism, and CDC guidance is direct: do not feed honey to a child younger than 1 year old. That applies to this dressing exactly as it applies to honey from a jar, and it does not matter that the honey is raw, local, or from a comb. Serve something else to an infant.

History

There is no origin story for this particular dressing and I am not going to manufacture one. Honey-and-lemon dressings are a general category rather than a named dish with a documented inventor.

What does have a real history is comb honey itself, which is simply the oldest form the product comes in. Honey was eaten in the comb long before anyone extracted and jarred it, and cut comb remained the normal retail form well into the era of industrial beekeeping. Extracted honey took over because it pours, ships and stores more conveniently, not because it tastes better. Buying comb and straining it yourself, which is what this recipe asks you to do, is a small reversal of that trade.

Nutrition

An estimate, calculated ingredient by ingredient from USDA FoodData Central entries by hand rather than measured in a lab. The recipe makes about 1 cup and the figures are given per 2 tablespoons.

References

• CDC: Botulism Prevention, on why honey must not be fed to a child younger than 1 year old
• FoodSafety.gov: Cold Food Storage Chart, on refrigerating at 40F or below

Related Guides

The natural comparison is Italian Dressing, which uses a single teaspoon of honey purely to round off sharp vinegar, where this one makes honey the point; putting them side by side shows how much work a sweetener does at each extreme. For a creamy dressing that gets its body from cultured dairy in the same way but goes savory instead of sweet, see Ranch Dressing.

Thank You

Thanks for buying a comb and doing this the long way. If you get hold of a comb from a distinctive nectar source, buckwheat or orange blossom or heather, I would like to know how far it moved the dressing, because that variation is the entire reason comb is worth the trouble. Drop me a note through the contact page. Two dressings left in this batch, so tell me which you want next.

Chef Alan
Wine Drop Cookery
35 years, Six Four Diamond Awards