Buckles, Cobblers, Grunts and Slumps

It's blueberry season in Washington, though it's now over in Maine. But the abundance of blueberries got me thinking about peach cobblermy mom's blueberry buckle recipe. It's a very good recipe, but what got me thinking was the name. What, pray tell, is a buckle? Fruit buckles are very much associated in my mind with New England, but my quick check of southern recipe collections suggest that that's not the case historically, though the southern recipes for buckles feature apples and plums rather than blueberries. A buckle, for the curious, is an old-fashioned style of single layer cake, typically cooked in a flat pan, round or square (rather than , and includes fruit and streusel-style crumb topping. Some recipes call for mixing the fruit into the cake batter, others have the cook spread the fruit between the batter and streusel topping, as a separate layer. The batter is very dense, and as the cake cooks the batter sinks to the bottom, and pushes the fruit and streusel up, making them "buckle," or give way. In other words, the "buckle" in question is derived from the verb, with the meaning of "to bend, warp, bulge, or collapse" Etymologically speaking, buckle derives from Middle English bokel, from Old French boucle, from Latin buccula, the cheek strap of a helmet, itself derived from a diminutive of bucca, or "cheek."

A cobbler is a Southern fruit dessert. The fruit is usually peaches, or berries; either blackberries, raspberries or cherries. Biscuit dough is dropped in spoonfuls over a mixture of fruit and syrup (made with sugar and fruit juice) or it's rolled out and placed as a top layer, sealing in the juice and berries. The OED associates cobblers with the American west, and offers Bartlett's Dictionary of 1859 as the first attestation "A sort of pie, baked in a pot lined with dough of great thickness, upon which the fruit is placed; according to the fruit, it is an apple or a peach cobbler." The OED subsequently refers to Mark Twain in 1880 and his Tramp Abroad, and a "Peach cobbler, Southern style." I confess that I have no clue about the etymology; or why a word associated with manufacturing shoes, or temporary fixes might be associated with a rather fabulous dessert. I note, in passing, that it's possible that the meaning of "cobbler" is related to the use of cobble as verb to mean "One who mends clumsily, a clumsy workman, a mere botcher." But I'm guessing, rather wildly.

A grunt is very much a New England dish. It's a fruit dessert made by stewing fresh fruit, briefly, then putting the very hot fruit in a baking dish and dropping spoonfuls of a biscuit-dough like batter on to the very hot fruit. The steam from the fruit cooks the dough—and often, the escaping steam from the partially smothered and still cooling fruit creates a "grunting" noise. You normally finish cooking the grunt in an oven so that the topping is browned, and if possible you sprinkle a little sugar on the top before you pop it in the oven, and the sugar and the juice and the steam and heat from the oven create a lovely caramel. Grunts are very much part of New England wood-stove cooking, so much so that growing up I noticed some women identified their cast iron dutch ovens as "grunts." Elsewhere, for instance in Georgia and coastal Carolina, the same dessert is called a slump, because when you take the dessert off the heat it slumps.

You often still have blackberries and plums, unfrozen, in New Hampshire in late September, just as fall is about to burst forth in full glorious leafage, and even now, I get all nostalgic about grunts and cobblers and buckles. I'm going blackberry picking tomorrow, and with luck, will make at least one cobbler. Note: Freeze ripe peaches now, and you can have peach cobbler in February. I'm a firm believer in blackberry grunt and plum grunt, as well, and the late plums are still on trees here. I note that buckles, cobblers, grunts and slumps are all best served warm with a scoop of really good ice cream.