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Dessert

Apple Butter

Apple butter is a thick, sweet spread made by cooking apples in cider until it adheres to a plate.

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

Prepare the cider

  1. Boil the cider down to half its original quantity.

Cook the apple butter

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Add the apples to the boiled cider.

  3. Stir constantly for 8 to 10 hours until soft.

  4. To test, it should adhere to an inverted plate.

Store

  1. Store in stone jars, covering with writing paper pressed down on the apple butter.

  2. Cover the jars with thick brown paper tied securely.

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

Cider
Provides the liquid base, and boiling it down concentrates its sugars and flavor before the apples go in.
Cooking apples
Break down during long stirring to form the thick, spreadable body of the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly for 8 to 10 hours. Apple sugars scorch easily on the bottom of a pot over long cooking, and constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the butter darkens without burning.

“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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