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Dessert

Apple Butter

Apple butter is a thick, sweetened apple preserve made by boiling cider and apples until reduced.

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

  1. Boil the sweet cider down to 10 gallons.

Make the butter

  1. Add the apples in thirds, stirring constantly with a long-handled stirrer.

  2. Keep the mixture boiling and well stirred until it reduces to 5 gallons and becomes dark and smooth.

  3. Taste periodically to check for doneness.

Store

  1. Once done, transfer to jars, cover with paper, and store in a cool place.

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

Sweet cider
Provides the liquid that is reduced down, concentrating its sugars and flavor into the butter.
Sweet apples
Break down during long cooking to form the thick, smooth body of the butter.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture boiling and well stirred until done. Apple mixtures are thick and sugary, so they scorch easily on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring prevents burning and keeps the texture smooth as the liquid evaporates and the color darkens.

“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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