Spice to taste

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 21st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Home-cooked family traditions.

Few things say Thanksgiving like family recipes. But passing down the traditions takes practice. One family in a small Virginia town has come to learn the lesson.

REICHARD: Gretchen Whittington is a journalism student at Patrick Henry College. Every year her family gathers to make apple butter, and she brings us the sounds — if not the smells — of what it takes to keep a family tradition cooking.

SOUND: [Conversation around the fire, pot bubbling]

GRETCHEN WHITTINGTON, REPORTER: We make apple butter the old-fashioned way: over an open fire, with family. In October, we’d made about 30 gallons of regular applesauce. We picked 5 bushels, over 200 pounds, of Golden Delicious apples from a local orchard.

SOUND: [Washing]

Then we washed them.

SOUND: [Chopping]

Quartered them.

SOUND: [Steaming]

Steamed them.

SOUND: [GRINDING]

And ground them up.

Family began arriving in Winchester on Friday, November 3. The next day, we were going to turn our applesauce, which is good but boring, into apple butter.

For those who aren’t familiar, apple butter is highly concentrated applesauce with extra sugar and seasonings. It has an almost jam-like consistency.

Uncle Eddie explained to me that the sugars in the apple carmelize in the copper kettle.

EDDIE: The copper in the kettle acts as a catalyst to accelerate that, so within five or six hours we can make it turn from a light yellow to a dark burgundy.

We spread it on crackers and toast and pancakes. Some of us boldly slather it on dishes like salmon.

On Saturday, most of the family was up by about 7. Friends and a few more relatives, about 30 altogether, would come and go throughout the day.

We cleaned our old, dented and scratched copper kettle and got the ingredients ready.

SOUND: [Kettle washing]

By 7:45 it was time to light the fire. Uncle Eddie normally handles that. But Uncle Eddie was still sleeping. “We’ll go on without him,” my dad said. He doused some gas on the teepee of wood.

MAN: You’re going to have to move [Sound of gasoline pouring]

My dad looped a trail of gas across our yard. Now that I think about it, a lot of people in my family like starting fires.

He stepped away to set the gas can down, came back, and grabbed the propane torch.

SOUND: [Propane torch]

Then he asked, “Anyone see where the gas trail is?”

I bent down, squinting at the ground. I started to point out a spot, but then I realized I was actually standing on the trail of gas.

SOUND: [Fire whoosh]

I saw a burst of orange between my feet and stumbled backwards.

The fire rushed across the lawn and then our firewood teepee burst into flames.

SOUND: [Fire crackling]

Step one. Accomplished.

My hometown Winchester was once known as the apple capital of the world. We exported apples across the country. Everybody had an apple recipe or two, from cider to cobbler, and of course, apple butter. Churches used to make several kettles’ worth as fundraisers. They’d run from four in the morning to the mid-afternoon or evening.

DWAIN: Apple butter should have a little bit of tang from the apples.

My dad, Dwain Whittington, has helped make apple butter since he was five.

DWAIN: It should have a nice bold sweetness. And I believe that the clove and cinnamon spice should be something that is unmistakable.

He started picking up the tradition for the family around fifteen years ago. He’s tried other kinds of homemade apple butter, but it’s not quite up to our standards. And the stuff you buy at the grocery?

DWAIN: Most commercial apple butter you would buy at the store is almost inedible.

For Dad, apple butter making is all about community. The conversations that happen around the kettle on cooking day. We start off by boiling the applesauce for about six hours. Someone has to keep stirring the kettle as it boils. Forward and back. Sweeping left to right, and then a couple of times around the edges to keep the bottom from burning. It’s something you can do while carrying on a conversation.

VOICE: There might be some doughnuts over there. We’ve kind of eaten all our share, there’s five or six of them there…

Dad explained that most of the time, social norms leave people on guard and tight-lipped. But when you’re working with your hands, you relax and talk more openly.

His older brother, Eddie Whittington—that’s my uncle from earlier—feels that apple butter making is a time to make memories with family. And play games, like lawn darts. Once a spotlight fell off a ladder into the kettle. The butter had a ghostly glow while they tried frantically to pull out the light. Then there was the time they made apple butter in a hurricane.

EDDIE: It's making new memories, and it's keeping the family together. So it's not only a family reunion, but because you produce something that people take home and use throughout the year on their breakfast pancakes.”

For my mom, Chelle Whittington, making apple butter the traditional way with family is what matters. She says that it’s like cursive: it’s special, unique, and something that we’re slowly losing.

CHELLE: If you stopped doing it now, you would lose connections. If you don’t have that anymore you lose an essential part of life.

SOUND: [Boiling applesauce]

After boiling the applesauce down, then we add sugar to taste. Usually about 90 pounds of it.

AUDIO: [Discussion of tasting]

Then we boil it some more. Then we add our signature spices: cloves and cinnamon extract. I just can’t tell you the ratios. That’s a family secret, kept on an Excel spreadsheet.

VOICES: It’s very spicy. Man, that smells good …

The last time we made apple butter was four years ago. Recently, both of my dad’s parents have passed away, and several of their siblings as well.

The old orchards of Winchester, too, are disappearing. Old kettles are being sold for household decoration. It seems that many have moved on.

To me, this is the real story of apple butter: change. Our tradition connects the past to the present. Apple butter making is a constant in a shifting world that is sometimes confusing, or sad, or scary. So my sister and I have agreed that the Whittington apple butter tradition isn’t going anywhere. Times will change, but I can be sure of two things: The presence of God, and our family filling our old kettle in just a few years for another batch of apple butter. No matter what it takes.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Gretchen Whittington in Winchester, Virginia.

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