Being chronologically betwixt the two major food holidays at the moment, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least make mention of one of the hardest working desserts in showbiz -peach🍑 cobbler😁. It’s actually quite difficult to not find some version of the dish in a Black American, or even Southern home this time of year. It’s just a friggin must have! Like…. I will legit pick over the entirety of a meal if I don’t see a handsome cobbler somewhere in the line up. And it ain’t eemmm (even) gotta be HANDSOME handsome. I’ll take medium-handsome. So long as it looks like some effort/love went into it, it’s not loaded with nutmeg (ya’ll gotta cut that crap) and it doesn’t resemble soup with crust. 🗣Lean over and tell ya neighbor, don’t nobody want no damn peach soup!
Now, I know you’ve got your Nana’s recipe and it works well for you, but there are so many other ways to enjoy the dish. Let’s dig into how peach cobbler made it to our plates, then we’ll work on a few alternatives to bless your holiday gatherings.
Remember! We’re working with a great deal of butter and sugar this week. Please, enjoy these recipes responsibly and in moderation.
Where do we start?
Though my personal favorite is blackberry, peach cobbler is, arguably, the most widely accepted and celebrated cobbler dish. Hence, our deeming it “the best”. Historically, fruit pies and cobblers are practically no stranger to any culture, least of all Europeans, who plainly didn’t enjoy fresh fruit very much. We owe the basic theology of “pie” to Dutch and English immigrants, who brought traditional recipes with them to the New World and adapted to what resources were available. Unable to make traditional puddings due to lack of suitable ingredients and cooking equipment, settlers learned that covering a stewed filling with a layer of uncooked plain biscuits or dumplings, fitted together, would be just as suitable.
“Cobbler is a dish consisting of a fruit or savoury filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a batter, biscuit, or dumpling (in the United Kingdom) before being baked. Some cobbler recipes, especially in the American south, resemble a thick-crusted, deep-dish pie with both a top and bottom crust. Cobbler is part of the cuisine of the United Kingdom and United States, and should not be confused with a crumble.”
-Some rando on Wikipedia who happens to have gotten it right
Traditionally, a cobbler simply consists of of a fruit filling and crust (only on top) of some sort. With that, a variety of cobbler styles have been developed over time:
Cobbler – Cobblers are an American deep-dish fruit dessert or pie with a thick crust (usually a biscuit crust) and a fruit filling (such as peaches, apples, berries). Some versions are enclosed in the crust, while others have a drop-biscuit or crumb topping.
Crisps and Crumbles – Crisps are baked with the fruit mixture on the bottom with a crumb topping. The crumb topping can be made with flour, nuts, bread crumbs, cookie or graham cracker crumbs, or even breakfast cereal. A Crumble is the British version of the American Crisp.
Betty or Brown Betty – A Betty consist of a fruit, most commonly apples, baked between layers of buttered crumbs. Betties are an English pudding dessert closely related to the French Apple Charlotte. Betty was a popular baked pudding made during colonial times in America.
Grunts or Slump – Early attempts to adapt the English steamed pudding to the primitive cooking equipment available to the Colonists in New England resulted in the grunt and the slump, a simple dumpling-like pudding (basically a cobbler) using local fruit. Usually cooked on top of the stove. In Massachusetts, they were known as a grunt (thought to be a description of the sound the berries make as they stew). In Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island, the dessert was referred to as a slump.
Buckle or Crumble – Is a type of cake made in a single layer with berries added to the batter. It is usually made with blueberries. The topping is similar to a streusel, which gives it a buckled or crumpled appearance.
Pandowdy – It is a deep-dish dessert that can be made with a variety of fruit, but is most commonly made with apples sweetened with molasses or brown sugar. The topping is a crumbly type of biscuit except the crust is broken up during baking and pushed down into the fruit to allow the juices to come through. Sometimes the crust is on the bottom and the desert is inverted before serving. The exact origin of the name Pandowdy is unknown, but it is thought to refer to the deserts plain or dowdy appearance.
But how’d we get peaches in it? 🤔
In the Deep South, cobblers most commonly come in single fruit varieties and are named as such, e.g. blackberry, blueberry, and peach cobbler (old California orchard cuisine features peach, pear, apricot, and --most prized by many-- tartarian cherry cobbler). In approximately c.330 BCE, Alexander the Great introduced peaches from Persia to Europe. From there, the Spanish brought peaches to the New World. The climate of the American South is incredibly hospitable to the particular growing requirements of the peach. Because of that, we regard the peach as a predominantly southern fruit.
When it came to cooking, though, while recipes for pie had circulated throughout the lands, folks had to make do with what they had: fresh, dried, canned, or syrup-preserved fruit, -eventually- chemically leavened dough (using baking powder), and an open fire.
“Some homes had a kitchen hearth with a beehive oven built into the fireplace wall. Some had a outdoor brick oven. But many homes–even among those wealthy enough to own a slave or two–had no oven at all. All baking was done in iron pots, over the hot coals in the open hearth. Sliced peaches would be placed at the bottom of the pot, and then biscuit dough–perhaps leftover from breakfast–would be dropped over the fruit. Presto! [Peach] Cobbler.”
What’s it got to do with Soul Food?
As stated last week -young America was an ensemble of ideas and contributions, but we know whose hands pieced it all together; we know whose fingers were pricked for fashioning the quilt everyone here is happy to drape over their shoulders.
As with most anything which is accredited to Black culture, peach cobbler was adopted as a result of depravity. While flour, butter and sugar offered a bit of a challenge, peaches in the American South were in abundance and costs little to nothing for Blacks to ascertain, both pre- and post-emancipation. A cobbler served as a simple, almost fussless treat to prepare and share. Especially considering quantity -living in a certain predicament, one might be made excited by the idea of delighting your entire family with a whole bushel of peaches, and just a few handfuls of dough. Being accustomed to scarcity, anyone would be thrilled by a dish which would allow that “make it stretch” mentality.
☝🏽 But I cannot say that peach cobbler belongs to us! It was created here in the late 18th or early 19th century, around the time that baking soda became available and cooks began using it to puff up their dough. One of the first written mentioning of cobbler was in Mrs. Lettice Bryan’s 1839 cookbook, The Kentucky Housewife.
“Peach pot pie, or cobler as it is often termed, should be made of clingstone peaches, that are very ripe, and then pared and sliced from the stones… Eat it warm or cold. Although it is not a fashionable pie for company, it is very excellent for family use… While cobbler is indeed a fine dish for families, all the company I’ve served it to has also been thrilled with this succulent, richly flavored homespun treat!”
So this one here is for Southern culture as a whole. This one is for all of us, baby!
Feel free to sub peaches for virtually any fruit commonly known to pie fillings. Just remember that for the best cobbler -it’s name is peaches, and it’s the best. Now, let's get cooking on a few.
Until next time, I challenge you to live good, to do good and to eat good. But above all else, from deep in my soul, I wish you happy feelin's. See ya in the kitchen!
-Julian B.