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Dessert

Pure Apple Butter

Apple butter made from dried apples and pumpkin, sweetened with glucose and tartaric acid, spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and preserved with salicylic acid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pure Apple Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter

  1. Cook the dried apples and pumpkin in a jacket kettle until the apples are soft.

  2. Season the mixture with oil of cinnamon, nutmeg, and a little clove.

  3. Preserve with salicylic acid.

Pack and label

  1. Pack in wooden buckets and label as 'Pure Apple Butter.'

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide the main fruit body and natural sweetness that the butter is built on.
Pumpkin
Adds bulk and moisture, thickening the mixture as it cooks down.
Glucose
Adds sweetness and helps keep the finished butter smooth and spreadable.
Tartaric acid
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking until the apples are soft. Apples must be fully softened so the mixture breaks down into a smooth, spreadable butter. Undercooked pieces stay firm and leave a grainy texture, while the sugars in the mixture can scorch if heat is too high during long cooking.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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