Brown Betty
One and one-half cupfuls of bread crumbs, one-half of a cupful of sugar, one pint of chopped apples, one cupful of chopped raisins, one teaspoonful of cinnamon, one-quarter of a teaspoonful of cloves, or nutmeg, four tablespoonfuls of butter. Melt the butter and pour it over the crumbs, turning them that they may be evenly buttered. Grease a deep pudding dish and put it in layers of the crumbs, apples, raisins and sugar mixed with the spice; have the last layer crumbs. Cover closely and bake for three-quarters of an hour in a moderate oven; then uncover and brown. Serve hot with hard sauce.
A layered apple and breadcrumb pudding of the sort every late-Victorian household kept in rotation for using up stale bread. The recipe assumes knowledge the modern cook may not have, chiefly what kind of crumbs and what a moderate oven means.
- Use soft crumbs, not dry onesThe hinge of the dish. These should be fresh or day-old bread torn or grated into soft crumbs, not the fine dry crumbs sold in canisters, which absorb the butter and apple juice and set into a paste. About 1 1/2 cupfuls of soft crumbs is roughly three slices of bread.
- A pint of chopped applesA liquid measure used for a solid, as was normal then: 2 cups chopped, or two to three medium apples, peeled. A firm tart variety holds its shape; a soft one collapses into sauce, which is not fatal but changes the texture.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; 'moderate' in period usage is roughly 350-375F. Three-quarters of an hour covered, as directed, then uncover and brown, which will usually take a further 10 to 15 minutes until the top crumbs are crisp.
- Cover closelyFoil or a lid, sealed. The dish carries no added liquid at all, so the apples must steam in their own juice for the first stage or the crumbs scorch before the fruit softens.
- Butter quantityFour tablespoons is half a stick, and it should be poured over the crumbs while warm and tossed until every crumb is coated. Under-buttered crumbs stay pale and dusty rather than browning.
- Hard sauceSeldom met with now, though its close relative brandy butter is still sold. It is creamed butter beaten with powdered sugar, roughly one part butter to two of sugar, flavored with vanilla, brandy or nutmeg, then chilled firm and served in a spoonful on the hot pudding so it melts.
- YieldA 1 1/2 to 2 quart dish, six servings.
Brown Betty is a thrift pudding: it exists to turn stale bread and cheap fall apples into dessert without pastry, and it belongs to the same American family as apple crisp and pandowdy, both of which cover fruit with something starchy rather than enclosing it. The name is generally traced to American print of the 1860s, though its origin is unrecorded and the various explanations offered for the "Betty" are traditional rather than documented. Its appearance in a general-purpose book like this one reflects how such puddings were treated at the turn of the century: assembled from the bread box and apple barrel, baked in whatever deep dish was to hand, and made respectable by a spoonful of hard sauce.