I don't leave yesterday's apple sauce on the table

After a Sunday roast, or with the morning porridge, a bowl of apple sauce sits on our table: golden, still steaming a little, a spoon already beside it. It is so easy to say "I'll put it away later", and by the morning there is a brown film on top and the bowl has spent the night on the table. So I have a simple rule: the sauce that is left over goes into the fridge that same evening, not the next day.

I make apple sauce often in autumn, when there are more apples than we can eat. For a bowl that does several meals, I peel, core and chop 1 kg of cooking apples or a mix of whatever we have, and put them in a pan with 3 tbsp water and 1 tbsp lemon juice. Then 2 tbsp sugar and 1/4 tsp cinnamon. I cover the pan and cook it gently for fifteen to twenty minutes, stirring now and then, until the apples collapse. Then I beat it with a wooden spoon, or leave it chunky.

Once it is made, the clock starts. Cooked food, including fruit sauces, shouldn't sit out at room temperature for long, because bacteria grow fastest in warm food left on the side. I let the sauce cool for no more than an hour or two, then spoon it into a clean jar with a lid, or cover the bowl, and into the fridge it goes. The fridge should be at 5°C or below.

In the fridge, I eat it within two days. A home-made sauce with little or no sugar isn't a preserve, and it doesn't keep like a jar of jam. Every time I take some out, I use a clean spoon, never the one that has been in someone's porridge, because that carries in crumbs and saliva and it spoils faster.

If I have made too much, I freeze some straight away, once it is cool, in small boxes or even an ice cube tray for the baby. Frozen apple sauce keeps for a few months. I thaw it in the fridge overnight and use it within a day.

Before serving leftover sauce, I always look at it and smell it. It should still look like apple and smell sweet and fresh. If there is a crust or mould on top, a grey cast, fizzing, or a sour or alcoholic smell, it goes in the bin. I don't scrape off the top and serve the rest.

The next day, apple sauce is useful in so many ways. A spoonful on porridge or yoghurt, alongside cold pork or sausages, in a pancake, or warmed and poured over a slice of plain cake. It is also a good first food for babies, plain and unsweetened, as long as it has been kept cold and is used within those two days.

Shop-bought apple sauce in a jar is a different matter. Unopened, it lives in the cupboard until its date. Once opened, I follow the label, which usually says to keep it in the fridge and use it within a few days.

Which apples make the best sauce? Bramleys and other cooking apples break down quickly into a soft, fluffy purée with a good sharp taste. Eating apples keep more of their shape and need less sugar. I often mix the two, and use up any bruised apples too, cutting away the bruises first.

Fresh sauce from the pan and yesterday's sauce from the jar are both lovely, but both want a clean spoon and a cold shelf. At yours, does the apple sauce reach the fridge the same evening, or does it spend the night on the table?