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Dessert

Apple Butter

A sweet, thick spread made by cooking apples with water and sugar until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Quarter the apples and place them in a preserving kettle.

  2. Barely cover the apples with water and boil until soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve to obtain the pulp.

Cook the butter

  1. Add 2/3 pint of sugar for each pint of pulp, or 1 pint if the apples are very sour.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for several hours until firm, stirring almost constantly to prevent burning.

  3. If desired, add cinnamon for flavor.

  4. Transfer to stone jars or bowls and cover when cold.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  5. Apple + crabtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Ripe apples
Provide the pulp that cooks down into the thick, spreadable body of the butter.
Sugar
Sweetens the butter and helps it thicken as the moisture cooks off.

The step that matters

Stirring during the long boil. Apple pulp is high in sugar and thick, so it scorches on the bottom of the kettle easily. Stirring almost constantly prevents burning and keeps the butter smooth and evenly coloured as water evaporates.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, 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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