Brown Betty
2 cups bread crumbs 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup butter 2 cups thinly sliced apples BROWN BETTY is an easily made dessert, and its richness is delightfully surprising in view of the simple and inexpensive materials used. Almonds (blanched and chopped) or raisins make it more tempting. Put a layer of apples in buttered baking dish, sprinkle with sugar. Add a layer of Bread crumbs, season with bits of butter and cinnamon; repeat until dish is filled. Then pour over one-half cup of water, cover and bake slowly for one hour, then uncover and brown. Serve with hard sauce or cream.
Nothing here is leavened and nothing is difficult. What the recipe needs is attention to the crumbs, which are doing more work than the ingredient list suggests.
- Dry crumbs, not freshBread crumbs in this booklet means the dry kind — stale loaf grated and left to harden — not soft fresh crumb and not panko. Fresh crumbs collapse into paste under the apple juice and the half cup of water, and the layers disappear.
- The ratio is of its timeEqual volumes of crumbs and apples gives a dish that is mostly bread. Later versions of this dessert run two or three times as much fruit. Doubling the apples is a departure from the original, but it is the change most cooks will want to make.
- Cinnamon appears only in the methodThe ingredient list omits the cinnamon the instructions call for, and gives no quantity for it anywhere. A teaspoon spread across the layers is in keeping with the rest of the booklet’s seasoning.
- Cold butter, cut smallThe half cup of butter is dotted over the layers rather than worked in. Cold butter cut into bits distributes through the dish; melted butter runs to the bottom and leaves the top layer dry.
- “Bake slowly”A slow oven in this book’s vocabulary is around 325°F. One hour covered, then uncovered for ten or fifteen minutes to brown, which is long enough for the top crumbs to crisp without the apples going to sauce.
- Hard sauceThe suggested accompaniment is butter and sugar creamed together until pale, sometimes with brandy or vanilla, and served cold in a spoonful on the hot pudding. It is not a cooked sauce, and it is where most of the richness comes from.
A booklet published to sell compressed yeast has no commercial reason to print a dessert containing none. It prints this one because the two halves belong to the same household arithmetic: a loaf raised on Monday is stale by Wednesday, and a kitchen that bakes its own bread never runs out of crumbs. The copy makes the economic argument out loud, calling the richness “delightfully surprising in view of the simple and inexpensive materials used” — a polite way of saying the dish costs almost nothing. The name is an old American one that was in print well before this booklet appeared. What the booklet adds is the line about almonds or raisins, the small upgrade that turns a thrift dish into something a cook would put in front of company without explaining it.