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Apple Butter
Wash and cut up tart apples without peeling, removing the core; for each half peck allow a quart of cider. Boil until apples are tender. Boil for another half hour, adding for each quart of pulp 2 cupfuls of sugar, adding also half teaspoonful each of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, also a little grated nutmeg, mixing all well together. Put away into stone jars or crocks when it has reached the proper consistency.
A terse version of a dish that traditionally took a full day in a copper kettle. The measurements are workable once translated, but the half-hour cooking time is the one number not to trust.
- Half a peck of applesA peck is 8 dry quarts, so half a peck is roughly 5 to 6 lb of whole apples — about 4 to 5 lb once cored. The matching quart of cider is 4 cups.
- Cider means sweet ciderIn this period "cider" on a fruit-preserving page is unfermented apple cider, not the alcoholic drink. Use fresh unfiltered apple cider or juice; hard cider will read sour and thin.
- Get the pulp before you measureThe apples go in unpeeled, so once they soften the cooked fruit is usually pressed through a food mill or coarse sieve to leave skins and fibre behind. The recipe does not say so outright, but the "quart of pulp" that governs the sugar and spice reads as measured after cooking, not before.
- Half an hour is not enoughApple butter takes its colour and its keeping quality from long, slow reduction — two to four hours on a low burner, or several hours in a 300F oven, stirring often. Thirty minutes gives spiced applesauce.
- Sugar is adjustableTwo cups per quart of pulp reflects period taste, and sugar also acts as a preservative. One cup per quart suits many modern palates, provided the finished butter is refrigerated or properly canned rather than held in an open crock.
- Watch for scorchingAs it thickens, the sugar catches easily. A heavy pan, a low flame and a flat-edged wooden spoon that reaches the corners are worth more than any timing.
- Testing the "proper consistency"Spoon a little onto a chilled plate: it should mound and hold its shape with no ring of watery liquid seeping out. It will firm further as it cools.
- StorageStone crocks assume a cold cellar, and such butters were often covered with paper or a layer of paraffin, though the recipe specifies neither. Today, either refrigerate the finished butter for a few weeks or fill hot half-pint jars and process them in a boiling-water bath following current canning directions.
- YieldExpect roughly 3 to 4 pints from this quantity, depending on how far the reduction is carried.