Apple butter

Apple butter (Dutch: appelstroop) is a highly concentrated form of apple sauce produced by long, slow cooking of apples with apple juice or water to a point where the sugar in the apples caramelize, turning the apple butter a deep brown. The concentration of sugar gives apple butter a much longer shelf life as a preserve than apple sauce.

The roots of apple butter lie in Limburg (Belgium and the Netherlands) and Rhineland (Germany), conceived during the Middle Ages, when the first monasteries (with large orchards) appeared. The production of the butter was a perfect way to conserve part of the fruit production of the monasteries in that region, at a time when almost every village had its own apple-butter producers. The production of apple butter was also a popular way of using apples in colonial America, well into the 19th century.

The product contains no actual dairy butter; the term butter refers only to the butter-like thick, soft consistency, and apple butter's use as a spread for breads. Sometimes seasoned with cinnamon, clove, and other spices, apple butter is usually spread on bread, used as a side dish, an ingredient in baked goods, or as a condiment. Apple butter may also be used on sandwiches to add an interesting flavor, but is not as commonly used as in historical times.

Vinegar or lemon juice is sometimes mixed in while cooking to provide a small amount of tartness to the usually sweet apple butter. The Pennsylvania Dutch often include apple butter as part of their traditional 'seven sweets and seven sours' dinner table array.

In areas of the American South, the production of apple butter is a family event, due to the large amount of labor necessary to produce apple butter in large quantities. Traditionally, apple butter was prepared in large copper kettles outside. Large paddles were used to stir the apples, and family members would take turns stirring. In Appalachian cuisine, apple butter was the only type of fruit preserve normally rendered into fruit leather.

In Europe, an apple butter is traditionally made which is closer to dense syrup, in the Netherlands (known as appelstroop, meaning apple syrup) and in Germany (known as Apfelkraut) and frequently eaten on bread with (or without) thinly sliced cheese and with Sauerbraten. A sweeter version, made using pears, as well as apples, is more popular in Belgium, where it is known as sirop de Liège. Other than in Benelux and the Rhineland, apple syrup is a minority taste in Western Europe (in Germany, outside of the Rhineland, it is generally sold in health food shops), and a similar food is produced in francophone Switzerland, where it is known as vin cuit.

Russian Пови́дло (from Czech povidla, or Polish powidła or powidło) is prepared by the reduction of fruit puree with some sugar and sometimes spices. The final product should contain no more than 34% of moisture and about 60% of sugar. The most popular one is made from apples, but povidlo is also made from apricots, cherries, prunes, pears, and cranberries. Polish powidła is made from fresh purple plums with the addition of sugar.

In Jersey, in the Channel Islands, apple butter is known as black butter or lé nièr beurre and includes liquorice as an ingredient. In Northern Ireland it is now produced under the name "Irish Black Butter" in Co. Armagh. The possibly apocryphal story is that it was Scots-Irish immigrants who introduced the recipe to the Appalachians.