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Dessert

Apple Butter

Apple butter is a thickened apple preserve made with apples, water, cider, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Wash the apples to remove dirt and slice them into small pieces.

  2. In a large pot, combine the apples and water; boil until the fruit is soft.

  3. Rub the cooked apples through a screen or sieve to make pulp.

Cook the apple butter

  1. Add the concentrated cider to the apple pulp and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the sugar and continue cooking.

  3. Just before reaching the desired thickness, add cinnamon and cloves to taste.

Jar and seal

  1. Once thickened, place the apple butter in hot containers and seal immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cidertop 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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the pulp that becomes the body of the butter.
Concentrated cider
Adds concentrated apple flavor and acidity to the pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the butter as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar and continuing to cook. Sugar raises the boiling point and draws water out of the pulp, so the butter thickens slowly. Cooking too briefly leaves it thin, and cooking too long or at too high a heat can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cider, sugar, 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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