CRUMBLES, CRISPS, COBBLERS: What’s in a name?
Does a crisp by any other name taste as sweet? The answer is that it does. We attempt to define Bettys, cobblers, buckles, and their kin -- we sort of succeed. Go to any two barbecues, any two cookouts, and each will call the same dish by another name. The Internet is no different. In every corner you’ll find a different definition, a rebel recipe. The regular ruspects opposite the more flamboyant slump, grunt, sonker, and pandowdy, the regular suspects are those with names that sound more like desserts than an 18th century dance performed somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line. These are the desserts you’ll see most often: cobblers, crisps, and crumbles. They’re are all made with fresh fruit -- part of the reason we’re so confused -- with a crust of some kind. A cobbler’s crust, generally, takes the form of dropped biscuits which swell up as they bake, unevenly and pleasantly craggy, to look like cobblestones. Easy, right? Crumbles and crisps get a bit trickier; they’re so closely related that they can switch places on a whim and you’d be none the wiser. And they often do. Both, again, have a stewed fruit foundation, but the distinction lies in whether oats are allowed in the streusel caps of crumbles. (With crisps, oats seem to be fair game.) Many of Martha’s recipes say no oats in a crumble, and since she’s Martha, you might be inclined to believe her. But don’t yet. Baking authority Maida Heatter has a blueberry crumble recipe that calls for oats, and a rhubarb crumble that doesn’t. Buckles and Bettys are a breeze. The first is decidedly more cake-like than the 306
rest, with the fruit added to a batter and a streusel sprinkled atop (oats, here, are up to you). When baked, its surface will appear to buckle just slightly, hence the name. A Betty, described as the thrifty cousin of the family, leans only on bread crumbs and sugar to support its fruit. With slumps and grunts, the waters, again, get muddier. Many think of these two as the same classic New England dessert. Some conjecture that their parts -- a layer of cooked fruit and a custardy, steamed-pudding-like top -- are similar, but the cooking method is different (slumps are baked and grunts are steamed on the
stovetop). Are you still keeping track? If you ever run into a sonker, act casual -- it’s basically a deep-dish cobbler made with biscuit dough or pie crust. Pandowdies, though, deserve pause for two reasons. First, they’re equal opportunist: top their seasonal piles of fruit with whatever pie or biscuit dough strikes your fancy. Add oats if you want. Second, the pandowdy is the novice baker’s saving grace, a fallback fruit dessert if making beautiful pies isn’t your strong suit: either at the end or halfway through cooking, you’ll break up the topping and stir it into the filling. In other words, a pandowdy is an acceptable excuse to wreck your pie. source: food52.com