Apple crisp is a

dessert Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as confections, and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. In some parts of the world, such as much of Greece and West Africa, and most parts o ...

made with a

streusel In baking and pastry making, streusel () is a crumbly topping of flour, butter, and sugar that is baked on top of muffins, breads, pies, and cakes.

topping. In the US and Canada, it is also called apple crumble, a word which refers to a different dessert in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Ingredients usually include cooked apples,

butter Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condim ...

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or do ...

flour Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains, roots, beans, nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many cul ...

cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus '' Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakf ...

, and often

oat The oat (''Avena sativa''), sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name (usually in the plural, unlike other cereals and pseudocereals). While oats are suitable for human con ...

s and

brown sugar Brown sugar is unrefined or partially refined soft sugar. Brown Sugar may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Brown Sugar'' (1922 film), a 1922 British silent film directed by Fred Paul * ''Brown Sugar'' (1931 film), a 1931 ...

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is a herbaceous perennial which grows annual pseudostems (false stems made of the rolled bases of ...

, and/or

nutmeg Nutmeg is the seed or ground spice of several species of the genus ''Myristica''. ''Myristica fragrans'' (fragrant nutmeg or true nutmeg) is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its seed, an ...

. One of the most common variants is ''apple rhubarb crisp'', in which the

rhubarb Rhubarb is the fleshy, edible stalks ( petioles) of species and hybrids (culinary rhubarb) of '' Rheum'' in the family Polygonaceae, which are cooked and used for food. The whole plant – a herbaceous perennial growing from short, thick rhi ...

provides a tart contrast to the apples. Many other kinds of fruit

crisps A potato chip (North American English; often just chip) or crisp (British and Irish English) is a thin slice of potato that has been either deep frying, deep fried, baking, baked, or air frying, air fried until crunchy. They are commonly serve ...

are made. These may substitute other fruits, such as

peach The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, n ...

es,

berries A berry is a small, pulpy, and often edible fruit. Typically, berries are juicy, rounded, brightly colored, sweet, sour or tart, and do not have a stone or pit, although many pips or seeds may be present. Common examples are strawberries, ras ...

, or

pear Pears are fruits produced and consumed around the world, growing on a tree and harvested in the Northern Hemisphere in late summer into October. The pear tree and shrub are a species of genus ''Pyrus'' , in the Family (biology), family Rosacea ...

s, for the apples.

History

Apple crisp is a relatively modern dish. It is notably absent from the first edition of the ''

Fannie Farmer Cookbook The ''Boston Cooking-School Cook Book'' (1896) by Fannie Farmer is a 19th-century general reference cookbook which is still available both in reprint and in updated form. It was particularly notable for a more rigorous approach to recipe writing ...

'' (1896), which is a comprehensive collection of American recipes. The earliest reference to apple crisp in print occurs in 1924, with a recipe in the ''Everybody's Cook Book: A Comprehensive Manual of Home Cookery'', Isabel Ely Lord arcout Brace and Company: New York1924 (p. 239). In 1924, apple crisp also makes an appearance in a newspaper article in the ''Appleton Post Crescent'' on Tuesday, December 9, 1924 (Appleton, Wisconsin). Its popularity further spread during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, when food rationing limited access to pastry ingredients used for making

apple pie An apple pie is a fruit pie in which the principal filling ingredient is apples. The earliest printed recipe is from England. Apple pie is often served with whipped cream, ice cream ("apple pie à la mode"), or cheddar cheese. It is gene ...

s. Despite its relatively recent invention, apple crisp or crumble has become an American and British

tradition A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

especially during the autumn, when

apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

s are plentiful. The dish is also very popular in Canada, especially in areas where berries and fruit are readily available. Variations of this dish are much older. For example, a recipe for apple pandowdy is in ''Miss Corson's Practical American Cookery'', 1886.

Similar dishes

There are a number of desserts that employ

s with sweet toppings, but none of them are the same as apple crisp, making them not so much variants, but instead other related apple desserts.

Apple Brown Betty A Brown Betty is a traditional American dessert made from fruit (usually apple, but also berries or pears) and sweetened crumbs. Similar to a cobbler or apple crisp, the fruit is baked, and, in this case, the sweetened crumbs are placed in layers ...

(or apple pudding) consists of alternating layers of apples and sweetened buttered

bread crumbs Bread crumbs or breadcrumbs (regional variants including breading and crispies) consist of crumbled bread of various dryness, sometimes with seasonings added, used for breading or crumbing foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thicken ...

or crackers, often with a sauce. Apple cobbler (also known as apple slump, apple grunt, and apple pandowdy) is an old recipe in which the baked apples are topped with a cobbler crust formed of batter,

pie crust Shortcrust pastry is a type of pastry often used for the base of a tart, quiche, pie, or (in the British English sense) flan. Shortcrust pastry can be used to make both sweet and savory pies such as apple pie, quiche, lemon meringue or chick ...

baking powder biscuit In the United States and Canada, a biscuit is a variety of baked bread with a firm, dry exterior and a soft, crumbly interior. It is made with baking powder as a leavening agent rather than yeast, and at times is called a baking powder biscuit ...

dough. The topping may be dropped onto the top of the

s in clumps, which have a 'cobbled' appearance, thus the name. Apple pan dowdy most commonly features a pie crust, which is broken ("dowdied") before serving: it is a pie, not a cobbler. A 'grunt' is a cobbler cooked on top of the stove and a 'slump' is fruit and biscuit dumplings which is turned upside down after being baked so that the fruit is slumped into the fruit with a fork.Grunes, p. 134

Apple crumble An apple crumble is a British dessert featuring baked apple with a crunchy topping. In the UK, the term 'crumble' refers to both a dessert similar to the American apple crisp, which is topped with rolled oats and brown sugar, or a dessert topp ...

is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

pudding similar to the apple crisp that originated during

food rationing. The crumble topping is made of butter, flour, and

rolled together so that it resembles

breadcrumb Bread crumbs or breadcrumbs (regional variants including breading and crispies) consist of crumbled bread of various dryness, sometimes with seasonings added, used for breading or crumbing foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thicken ...

s. Care must be taken to balance the correct amount of crumble with the fruit, or else the filling may seep through and spoil this crust. Crumble is traditionally served with

custard Custard is a variety of culinary preparations based on sweetened milk, cheese, or cream cooked with egg or egg yolk to thicken it, and sometimes also flour, corn starch, or gelatin. Depending on the recipe, custard may vary in consistency fr ...

, but today it is sometimes served with cream or ice cream. Crumbles made from apples, and sometimes other fruits, are also common in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. Eve's pudding is a British dessert that is essentially a sponge cake atop the apples. The name may originate from the biblical reference to Eve and the apple in the

Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan- Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2-3 and Ezekiel 28 ...

References

External links

Food Timeline history Notes: Apple Pie
{{DEFAULTSORT:Apple Crisp American pies Crisp

History

Similar dishes

See also

References

External links