Buckles, grunts, slumps and pandowdy
Buckles, grunts, slumps, and pandowdy – no, those aren’t the sounds my intestinal tract is making after Thanksgiving dinner (well maybe it is, but that is for me and my doctor to discuss). What I am talking about here though are those delicious, warm from the stove, fruit-filled desserts. But where did they get these crazy names?
Next to gardening, food/cooking is my second greatest passion, especially old-time recipes. And I have a collection of old cookbooks picked up at garage sales and thrift stores that rival my seed collection. And the first time, I saw a recipe called apple grunt, I thought that must be some extraordinary kind of typo. But instead, I learned so much more.
As always, I turned to my favorite food expert, Mary Liz Wright, University of Illinois Extension Educator in Food and Wellness, who serves Clark, Crawford, and Edgar counties. Fortunately, she graciously helps me out here when I have questions.
Mary Liz explained that even though the names and methods are slightly different, all these fruit/crust desserts are connected. They all use some type of fruit, typically fresh, but don’t discount those cans of prepared fillings, as they are a fine substitute. All the recipes include a sweetener, sugar, honey, or one of the many sugar substitutes.
If you choose a sugar substitute, remember to investigate which sugar substitutes are appropriate for recipes that need to be cooked. Those containing aspartame (NutraSweet or Equal) become unstable at high temperatures and are not recommended for baked or cooked products.
The third commonality of these recipes is that they all include flour, or something made with flour. Grunts use biscuit dough. Cobblers may use cake batter or cookie dough.
But ah, those names! Where on earth did, they come up with recipes called slumps, grunts and clafoutis? Sounds more like a serious disease than a treat. One answer lies in the regional passalong recipes handed down from generation to generation. What is a slump one place, might be called a grunt somewhere else. Kind of like our constant debate on soft drinks: Is it pop (yes) or soda (well, depends on where you are from).
And as we all know, our ancestors were frugal; nothing went to waste. So many recipes were created and adapted to what was on hand at the time. And we are lucky they did, because that makes it easy for us to see what we have lurking in the orchard, garden, or pantry to make these easy, quick desserts.
Each of these desserts do have a little history, I came to learn, as I baked my way through several recipes. A grunt for example, was so named because of the sound it makes when it is cooking. Grunts are typically berry recipes where the fruit is cooked below pillows of biscuit dough. The actual “grunt” was supposedly the sounds of the fruit bubbling up the dough as it cooked.
Notice, I didn’t say baked. Grunts are stove top (ideally cast-iron skillet) recipes. My blueberry grunt, however, chose not to speak to me, but it sure was delicious.
A slump is closely related. It starts on the stove, but then finishes in the oven. Slumps are said to have gotten their name from the way the crust of the dessert slumps onto the plate as it is being taken out of the baking dish. There are also some references that suggest the name slump refers to the well-fed eater of the slump and when full they slump in their chair. For me if that was the case, most of my favorite foods would be called slumps.
Buckles were so-called because the pastry topping would buckle as it was cooking. I would suggest it has something to loosen the buckle on our belts after a few servings.
For a recipe with European flair, and you can tell right from the name. Clafoutis (pronounced clah-flew-tee) is considered a French countryside dessert that is a baked pudding dotted with fruit on top. Cherry is the preferred fruit of choice for a clafoutis. In France, they keep the pits in the cherries for added flavor. How do you say Heimlich maneuver in French?
Pandowdy (or pan dowdy) is an old Colonial dessert and was said to be the favorite of Abbigail Adams, the wife of our second president. A pandowdy is a baked dessert that has a very crumbly dough rolled on top of the fruit layer. After baking, your “dowdy” the crust by breaking it with a fork so the edges absorb the juice while the center stays crisp.
That name dowdy comes from a middle English word doud, which meant an inelegant person, referring to the way the crust is haphazardly sliced up.
And finally, the great fruit/crust dessert debate: the crisp versus the crumble. What is the difference? The crisp is the Americanized version with increased sugar and butter usually mixed with oats. This results in a crisp topping even though the crust is baked along with the fruit. The crumble is British inspired and uses flour, sugar and butter streusel topping that is crumbly when prepared then sprinkled over the fruit.
Now I think I will go make one of these desserts, perhaps an apple crisp with some leftover apples. I will probably grunt in anticipation while it is cooking, then slump in my recliner for a nap after eating it!