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Apple Butter, Genuine

Apple butter made by cooking apples with cider and spices until a dark paste forms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Apple Butter, Genuine

Ingredients

Directions

Reduce the cider

  1. Boil down the cider until reduced by half.

Cook the apples

  1. In a kettle, add the reduced cider and 1 bushel of apples.

  2. Turn on steam and start the mechanical stirrer.

  3. Cook until a heavy, dark brown paste forms.

Season and finish

  1. Add the ground cinnamon and powdered nutmeg.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine perforated metal screen.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cider + cinnamontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the bulk of the butter and break down into a thick, smooth paste when cooked.
Cider
Provides the initial liquid and tangy flavor, which concentrates as it reduces.
Ground saigon cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma and flavor.
Powdered nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the finished butter.

The step that matters

Cook until a heavy, dark brown paste forms. Cooking long enough lets the apples break down and their sugars caramelize, giving thickness and color. Too little cooking leaves it watery, while too much heat or too little stirring can scorch it on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, apple, cinnamon. 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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