A HARTE APPETITE: DESSERTS WITH UNUSUAL NAMES AMERICAN TREATS

What could be more American than apple pie? How about a slump, buckle or grunt? Though these might sound like expletives from a Saturday morning television cartoon, they are, along with pandowdy, crisp, crunch, cobbler and brown betty, some of the "strange" names, to use the word of the late gourmet James Beard, which Americans have over the years given to their down-home fruit desserts.

As the new Joy of Cooking points out (in a chapter supervised by pastry chef Jim Dodge, the man who helped turn the restaurant in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts into a showplace for culinary masterpieces), the ancestors of these desserts are puddings on the one hand and pies on the other.

Though they exhibit considerable variation in ingredients and methods (they may use pie crust, biscuit dough and even dumplings and the fruit may be cooked over, under or inside the dough), they have a common denominator. As the Joy states, "However they are made, these are plain, uncomplicated desserts -- almost folklore, passed down from one generation to the next. ..."

Pandowdies might be the quintessential version of these American fruit desserts. Even the name suggests plainness. Sharon Tyler Herbst, in her Food Lover's Companion, claims the name might indeed refer to the dish's dowdy appearance. Others say that it alludes to the act of "dowdying" the pastry, the process of breaking up the partially baked crust and submerging it into the filling, a step usually taken about halfway through the cooking process.

Whatever the case, a pandowdy is a deep-dish dessert made of fruit and spices topped with a biscuit or pie dough that gets crisp and crumbly when baked.

The Joy of Cooking tells us pandowdies were originally eaten for breakfast, having baked overnight in the embers of a fireplace. They are often served warm with ice cream. Though apples are the typical fruit used in a pandowdy (many cookbooks treat pandowdy and apple pandowdy synonymously), other fruits, blueberries for example, can be used as well.

A grunt is essentially a concoction of steamed or stewed fruit and dumplings. Like many of these old-fashioned desserts, it originated in New England. Although Herbst says the names grunt and slump are interchangeable, The Joy of Cooking makes a distinction between them. A grunt, it says, is steamed in a mold and inverted when served. A slump, on the other hand, is cooked in a covered pan and served in a bowl with the dumplings on top.

The term grunt presumably comes from the sound the dish makes when unmolded. No one is quite sure what the origin of the term slump is, but the Joy observes that the word describes the eventual fate of the dumplings.

A buckle is a type of cake. Fruit is folded into the batter and streusel topping is scattered over it before baking. This causes the cake to crumple or "buckle" in spots, hence the name.

Blueberry buckle might well be the most common variety, but peaches are a good choice too.

A betty or brown betty is fundamentally a baked pudding where fruit is layered with buttered bread crumbs. The most common version is Apple Brown Betty, but other fruits can also be used.

The Joy of Cooking, for example, has a recipe for Banana Brown Betty where graham cracker crumbs are substituted for bread crumbs. As James Beard noted in his book, American Cookery, "Apple Brown Betty has many different guises. I don't think any two of the recipes are alike. They all have unusual bits of personality attached to them."

Crisps and crunches (the British call them crumbles) are perhaps the simplest fruit desserts of all. They consist of sweetened fruit which, in the case of a crisp, is covered with a crumbly topping or, in the case of a crunch, sandwiched between it. As cookbook author Lee Bailey suggests, these rugged desserts must have been the mainstays of frontier America when there was little time to make something fancy. Made from readily available ingredients, they are, he notes, "just the sort of thing people need after a hard day of carving out a new life for themselves and their families."

Finally there are cobblers. These are merely deep-dish fruit desserts topped with a crust. A biscuit crust is more common today, but in earlier times cobblers were most often made with pie dough. The derivation of the name cobbler is uncertain, but the authors of the Joy of Cooking maintain that it might refer to the act of patching, or cobbling, the ingredients together just as a shoemaker might.

As Bailey points out, "The cobbler is a dessert with no secrets except its simplicity." He warns against overzealous cooks who think it necessary to fancy up such desserts with complicated crusts or extra ingredients.

"Whenever you see too many ingredients in a cobbler recipe," he cautions, "put the whole thing down to a cookbook writer's ego (or desperation) -- and move on."

That's probably good advice for any of these indigenous concoctions, for, as Beard indicates, they are all the result of experimentation borne of a shortage of more refined ingredients in early America. And their very homespun nature is what makes them so special.

With fresh summer fruits in increasing supply, now is the time to give them a try to see why, except for England, as Beard reminds us, "we have been one of the most dessert-minded of all countries. ..."

Peach-Berry Cobbler

This classic recipe is from the late Hulda Lehne Hengst of Cape Girardeau, an avid recipe collector who regularly exchanged recipes with her sister, the late Meta Lehne Hengst (they married brothers) of Egypt Mills. Their recipe collection has been lovingly preserved for posterity in a booklet assembled by nephew and grandson Rick Borchelt who formerly lived in this area.

Ingredients:

14 tablespoons sugar, divided

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 cups sliced peaches

1 cup blueberries

1 cup sifted flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup soft butter

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions:

Combine four tablespoons sugar, brown sugar, and cornstarch and add water, blending well. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick. Add lemon juice, peaches, and berries and turn into two quart baking dish. Sift together flour, eight tablespoons sugar, baking powder, and salt and add butter and milk, beating until smooth. Spoon mixture over fruit and sprinkle with remaining two tablespoons sugar and the nutmeg. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes.

Plum Crisp

Though crisps are homey desserts by definition, the use of plums, it seems to me, makes this dish just a little more sophisticated. Though plums might not have the glamour of summer fruits like strawberries and peaches, the Italian prune variety, available at the end of summer and in the fall, is especially superb when baked in a cake, tart, clafouti, cobbler, or, as in this recipe from Gourmet magazine, a crisp.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sliced almonds

1 stick cold butter, cut into bits

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup water

4 teaspoons cornstarch

3 pounds Italian prune plums, halved and pitted

1/2 cup sugar

Directions:

Toast almonds until golden. In food processor blend flour, brown sugar, 1/2 cup oats, cinnamon, salt and butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. In a bowl, stir together flour mixture, remaining oats and almonds. Combine water and cornstarch. Cook plums with sugar in skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until sugar melts. Stir in cornstarch mixture and simmer, stirring, 15 minutes or until thickened. Transfer to three-quart baking dish and sprinkle with topping. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes or until topping is crisp and golden. Cool 10 minutes before serving warm with ice cream.

Blueberry and Nectarine Buckle

This recipe from Gourmet magazine takes traditional blueberry buckle to a new level with the addition of nectarines. Peaches also work well. Whipped cream makes a nice accompaniment. Though the name buckle refers to the appearance of the dessert, it could just as easily refer to one's belt buckle, which will surely need adjustment following a few helpings of this dessert.

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter, divided

1 1/4 cups sugar, divided

1 2/3 cups flour, divided

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

2 cups blueberries

2 nectarines, pitted and cut into 1-inch wedges

Directions:

Cut 1/2 stick butter into pieces and blend together with 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, the cinnamon, and the nutmeg until mixture resembles coarse meal. Chill. Cream remaining 1 1/2 sticks butter with remaining 3/4 cup sugar and beat in vanilla. Stir together baking powder, remaining 1 1/3 cups flour, and salt and beat into butter mixture alternately with eggs. Fold in fruit. Spread batter in 10-inch cake pan, sprinkle topping over, and bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes until tester comes out clean and topping is crisp and golden.

Apple Brown Betty

Here's the Joy of Cooking's classic recipe for this distinctly American dessert. If you'd like to defy tradition, try using blueberries instead of apples.

Ingredients:

3 medium apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1 1/2 cups dry bread crumbs

6 tablespoons melted butter

1 1/4 cups packed dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions:

Stir together bread crumbs and butter. In another bowl, whisk together brown sugar and spices. Spread one third of crumb mixture evenly in bottom of a 9-inch pie pan. Distribute half of apples over. Sprinkle with half of sugar mixture and then half of lemon juice. Cover with another third of crumb mixture, the remaining apples, the remaining sugar mixture, and the remaining lemon juice. Cover with remaining crumb mixture. Cover dish with foil and bake at 350 degrees until apples are nearly tender, about 40 minutes. Increase temperature to 400 degrees and bake until browned, about 15 minutes. Serve warm in bowls.

Got a culinary question you'd like to ask or an idea you'd like to see treated in this column? Send your suggestions to A Harte Appetite, c/o The Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.