Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Butter

Apple butter is a thick, sweet spread made by cooking apples in cider until it reduces to a sticky consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

Make the apple butter

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Add the apples to the boiled cider and cook until soft, stirring constantly for 8 to 10 hours.

  3. To test if done, the mixture should adhere to an inverted plate.

Store

  1. Store in stone jars, covering with writing paper cut to fit and pressing it down closely on the apple butter.

  2. Cover the jars with thick brown paper, tied down snugly.

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
Reduced by boiling to concentrate its sugars and flavor, forming the base that the apples cook into.
Cooking apples
Break down during long cooking to form the thick, smooth body of the butter and add fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture adheres to an inverted plate. Long, constant stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot, and the mixture thickens as water evaporates. Testing on an inverted plate shows whether enough moisture has cooked off to hold its shape.

“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.

More apple butter recipes

Pudding 3 See all 82 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes