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Cider Apple Butter

A thick spread made by reducing cider and finely cut apples into a glossy, crusty mixture, then cooled and spiced.

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 ↓

Cider Apple Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cider reduction

  1. Run the cider through a cream separator to purify it.

  2. Boil the cider until it reduces to 1 gallon.

Cook the apple butter

  1. Cut the apples finer than for stewing and add them to the boiling cider.

  2. Stir constantly with an apple butter stirrer until the mixture is smooth and glossy, or until it forms a crust on top.

  3. Once cooled, add spices to taste and can or pour into one-gallon jars.

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 that is reduced, concentrating its sugars and flavor into the thick butter.
Apples
Break down during cooking to form the smooth, thick body of the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly as the mixture thickens. Apple sugars scorch easily on the bottom of a pot as the liquid evaporates and thickens. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents burnt flavor and sticking.

“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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