On October 5, fall ushers in National Apple Betty Day with a sweet aroma of apples baked in cinnamon and oats.
Similar to what is known as apple crisp, crumble or cobbler, the American variant known as the Betty or Brown Betty dates from colonial times. Most Apple Betty recipes call for cinnamon, sugar and butter to make the crumbs that top sliced apples. Sometimes oats or flour are added, too.
- 1796 – The common understanding of a betty seems to be as a baked pudding containing apples and topped with a breadcrumb mixture. This would make the apple betty the English version of the French apple Charlette, which becomes in America the apple charlotte. The charlotte (also called a charlotte brown) is “a dish of apple marmalade covered in crumbs of toasted bread”, and appears quite early in American English print, in a 1796 New York Magazine.
- 1864 – The dessert is mentioned in “Yale Literary Magazine,” making its first appearance in print.
- 1877 – The Brown Betty recipe adopts cracker crumbs and apple sauce.
- 1890- The recipe for Brown Betty is included in the winning essay for the American Public Health Association Lomb Prize for Practical, Sanitary, and Economic Cooking Adapted to Persons of Moderate and Small Means.
- 1900s – Apple Betty and apple brown betty are probably the two most famous names in cobbler terminology, both of which turned up in “Yankee” cookbooks in the early to mid-1900s.
- It was part of a series of menus designed to feed a family on a budget of thirteen cents a day. Mrs. Abel may have carried the recipe into use in the New England Kitchen, an experimental Boston restaurant aimed at “improving” the food choices of the poor.
- The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family (Rosaceae).
- The story behind this classic dessert is somewhat nebulous. The Oxford Companion to Food deduced that there was in fact a real “Betty” of African-American descent for which the dish is named. It is believed that “brown” wasn’t referring to the dish, but to the cook herself, who may have been of mixed racial background.
- The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family (Rosaceae).
- It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans.
- Apples grow on small, deciduous trees.The tree originated in Western Asia, where its wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, is still found today.
- Apple Brown Betty was one of the favorite desserts of Ronald and Nancy Reagan in the White House.
- A Betty consists of fruit, most commonly apples, baked between layers of buttered crumbs. Betties are an English pudding dessert closely related to the French apple charlotte. Betty was a popular baked pudding made during colonial times in America.
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