When I whisk honey with oil, the result is thicker than the component liquids. When I whisk honey with mustard, the result is thinner than the component liquids. If I didn’t have real life experience to inform my opinion, I’d assume the mustard-honey solution would end up thicker as the mustard’s lecithin can bind water and oil soluble components. (Is it actually doing that and leaving the water/vinegar free in solution?)
Anyway, I’d like to know what makes these combinations different viscosities than their component liquids.
In: Chemistry
While lecithin can be a great emulsifier for oil and water parts of a mixture, honey has no oil in it, whats more is it is mostly sugar which readily dissolves in water, so when you mix honey into oil it will basically be a water sugar mixture, and since sugar isn’t an ionic compound this can interfere with the the lecithin emulsion of the mustard and make it more runny.
Now with honey + oil they won’t dissolve in eachother, but likely what is happening is just a physical change. Basically since neither of them dissolve, and honey is such a high viscosity substance, when you whip oil into honey you will get little small microscopic bits of oil surrounded by honey, inorder for the oil to recombine it needs to move through the honey, but since honey is so viscous it can take a long time for the oil and honey to separate. There is a bit of the sugar holding things together as well as sugar is kind of polar but weakly.
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