Fruit butter

Fruit butter is fruit cooked until it is thick and smooth enough to spread. Ohio State groups fruit butters with jams, jellies, preserves, conserves, and marmalades as sweet fruit products that differ by how the fruit is prepared and how firm the finish is ¹. It is not Butter. Apple butter is the usual example; the mechanism is Evaporation and pectin already in the fruit, not a sheet-test jelly.

A pot of apple butter in the refrigerator is cooked fruit. A shelf-stable jar is a canned acid food only on a tested process. Fruits sit with jams and pickles on the acid side of NCHFP's pH 4.6 line ². Use the process time specified for the fruit and jar.

See Jam for pectin gel; Apple for the fruit; Canning for the heat claim.