Home › Desserts › Peach Cobbler
Peach Cobbler
Originally a Maryland delicacy, peach cobbler has become a favorite wherever fresh peaches are obtainable. Pare enough large sweet ones to almost fill a deep pudding dish; do not halve or pit them but sprinkle with plenty of sugar, then cover with a rich pie crust rolled rather thicker than usual. Bake in a moderate oven for from forty minutes to an hour.
A three-sentence recipe that assumes you already know how to handle a deep dish and a pie crust. The unusual instruction — leaving the peaches whole and unpitted — is the part that needs the most thought.
- Pit the peaches anywayWhole unpitted fruit does turn up in baked dishes of this kind, and the stone can lend a faint almond note, but it leaves diners working around hot slippery pits under a crust. Halve and pit them, then pack the halves cut side down; the dish behaves the same and eats far better. Cracked or split stones should never go in, as the kernel inside is bitter and best kept out of food entirely.
- Moderate oven350F. At that heat the stated forty minutes to an hour is right for a deep dish: the crust wants to be fully browned and the fruit collapsing, and underbaking leaves a pale doughy underside sitting in juice.
- "Deep pudding dish"A deep straight-sided baking dish of roughly 2 quarts. A 9-inch deep pie plate or a 2-quart casserole both work; you want the fruit heaped nearly to the rim, since it sinks considerably.
- Sugar"Plenty" for 2 to 2 1/2 lb of ripe peaches means about 3/4 cup, less if the fruit is very sweet. A tablespoon of lemon juice sharpens it, and a tablespoon or two of flour or cornstarch tossed with the fruit will keep the juices from flooding out, which this recipe makes no provision for.
- The crust"Rather thicker than usual" is about 1/4 inch — a standard pie dough rolled generously so it can carry the weight and the steam. Cut two or three vents, or the crust lifts into a dome over a pool of syrup.
- Catch the boil-overA deep dish filled to the rim with sugared peaches will spill. Set it on a rimmed sheet pan.
- YieldServes six to eight. Let it stand 20 to 30 minutes before serving so the juices thicken; cream or vanilla ice cream is the usual accompaniment.
Cobbler is an American dish often said to have been born of a shortage: settlers without proper ovens or reliable pastry ingredients are supposed to have covered stewed fruit with whatever dough was to hand and baked it in a covered pot over coals. The name is generally traced, though without certainty, to the rough, cobbled appearance of the topping, though this book's version uses a single sheet of pie crust rather than the dropped biscuit dough most cooks now expect. The Maryland attribution is the sort of regional claim cookbooks of the period made freely and rarely documented; peach cobbler was well established across the mid-Atlantic and the South by the time this was written. Peaches in season were cheap and abundant, and a deep dish of fruit under one crust fed a family for a fraction of what individual pies would cost in pastry and labor.