Differences Between a Crisp, a Crumble, a Cobbler, and a Brown Betty | Blue Flame Kitchen (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between a crumble and a crisp and a cobbler? ›

Cobbler: A fruit dessert made with a top crust of pie dough or biscuit dough but no bottom crust. Crisp/crumble: In Alberta, the terms are mostly interchangeable. Both refer to fruit desserts similar to cobbler but made with a brown sugar streusel topping sometimes containing old-fashioned rolled oats.

Pandowdy: A pandowdy is a deep-dish baked fruit dessert with a flaky pie or biscuit topping. The main difference between a pandowdy and a cobbler is that the topping is rolled out to the shape of the baking dish, placed on top of the fruit mixture and partially baked.

Like an apple crisp, an apple crumble is a baked fruit dessert with a layer of topping. But unlike the crisp, the crumble topping rarely includes oats or nuts. Instead, a crumble's topping is more like streusel, made with flour, sugar and butter.

Though crumbles, crisps, and cobblers are more akin to pie, a buckle is a lot like cake. In fact, they look nearly identical to fruit-filled coffee cakes. As the batter rises in the oven, the weight of the fruit causes it to “buckle.”

A brown betty is similar to a crisp or crumble, except the topping is layered into the fruit mixture before baking for an intensely crunchy effect. Food Network Kitchen's Grilled Rhubarb Brown Betty is warm, sweet and super-crisp — excellent when served with a scoop of strawberry ice cream.

This has led some historians to believe that Betty was the name of the cook and creator of the recipe and that brown was in reference to her skin color.

Cobbler is usually topped with batter or biscuits in lieu of crust. Cobbler's name comes from its sometimes cobbled texture, which is a result of spooning or dropping the topping over the fruit rather than distributing it equally. This way, the filling can peek through.

Apple crisp is a dessert made with a streusel topping. In the US, it is also called apple crumble, a word which refers to a different dessert in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ingredients usually include cooked apples, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and often oats and brown sugar, ginger, and/or nutmeg.

A buckle is a funny name for an old fashioned fruit studded coffee cake. Like many other desserts in the extended cobbler family buckles take their name from their appearance—grunts grunt as they cook, slumps slump when served, buckles—you guessed it—buckle.

Both are very similar apple desserts, but the difference mainly comes down to the crumble topping: Instead of the flour and oat mixture used in an apple crisp, an apple brown betty uses breadcrumbs for its crumbly, delicious topping.

What is the difference between a cobbler and a pie? ›

The biggest difference between a cobbler and a pie is the placement of the dough. Pies have, at a minimum, a bottom crust with the fruit placed on top, while a cobbler has the fruit on the bottom and a dolloped dough on top instead.

Grunts are very similar to cobblers, but they are STEAMED instead of BAKED. The New England name for a cobbler. Similar to a cobbler, but the biscuit or pie dough is rolled out and placed on top of the fruit.

A crisp is “a type of dessert consisting of fruit baked with a crumble topping,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary's definition, citing an early use in a 1916 recipe for an apple crisp with a topping of butter, sugar, and flour that's mixed together by rubbing your fingertips “*ntil crumbly.” Often, at least ...

A pastry chef friend shared the technique. Instead of sprinkling the raw crumbs on top of the fruit, where they absorb the juices and turn a little mushy on their undersides, he spread them out in a pan and baked them separately, until crisp and cookielike.