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Dessert

Apple Butter

Apple butter is a thick, sweetened apple preserve made by cooking apples and cider until smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Apple Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cider

  1. Pour the cider into a large copper kettle and bring it to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  2. Once boiled down, remove half of the clarified cider into large clean crocks.

Make the apple butter

  1. Add the apples to the kettle and boil until soft, stirring continuously.

  2. Gradually add the remaining cider while stirring until all ingredients are combined.

  3. Continue boiling gently and stirring until the mixture is smooth and reaches the desired thickness.

  4. Transfer the apple butter into earthen crocks immediately; do not let it sit in the copper kettle.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cider + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet cider
Reduced by boiling to concentrate its sugars and flavour, and to supply the liquid for the butter.
Sweet apples
Break down into soft pulp that gives the butter its body and smooth texture.

The step that matters

Continuous stirring during the final boil. Apple sugars scorch easily on the bottom of a hot kettle. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents burnt flavour, while the long gentle boil thickens the mixture through evaporation.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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