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Dessert

Apple Butter

Apple butter is a sweetened, spiced apple puree made by cooking apples with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Wash and drain the apples, then cut them into pieces and remove the cores and blemishes.

  2. Stew the apples until tender, then let them cool.

  3. Rub the cooled apples through a coarse sieve.

Cook the butter

  1. For each pint of apple pulp, add ½ pound of sugar and cook until clear.

  2. Add spices to taste a few minutes before it is done.

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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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, which thickens and sets as its water cooks off.
Sugar
Sweetens the butter and helps it thicken into a spreadable texture as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cooking the pulp with sugar until clear. Sugar added to hot pulp needs enough time to dissolve and the mixture needs to reduce; stopping early leaves a thin, watery butter, while overcooking can scorch it on the bottom of the pan.

“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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