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![]() Apple crisp with a scoop of vanilla ice cream | |
Alternative names | Apple crumble |
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Region or state | Everybody's Cookbook: US |
Main ingredients | |
Apple crisp (US, or apple crumble in the UK) is a dessert made with a streusel topping. Ingredients usually include cooked apples, butter, sugar, flour, and cinnamon. The earliest reference to apple crisp in print occurs in 1924. Other similar desserts include apple Brown Betty, apple cobbler, apple pan dowdy, apple pie, and Eve's pudding.
An apple crisp dessert is made with a streusel topping. [1] In the US, it is also called apple crumble, a word which refers to a different dessert in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. [2] [3] [4]
Ingredients usually include cooked apples, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and often oats [ citation needed ] and brown sugar, ginger or nutmeg. [1] One of the most common variants is apple rhubarb crisp, in which the rhubarb provides a tart contrast to the apples.[ citation needed ]
Apple crisp is a relatively modern dish. It is notably absent from the first edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (1896), which is a comprehensive collection of American recipes. Variations of this dish are much older, for example, a recipe for apple pandowdy is in Miss Corson's Practical American Cookery, 1886. [5]
The earliest reference to apple crisp in print occurs in 1924, with a recipe in the Isabel Ely Lord's Everybody's Cook Book: A Comprehensive Manual of Home Cookery. [6] Apple crisp also made an appearance in a newspaper article in the Appleton Post Crescent on December 9, 1924. [7] Its popularity further spread after World War II, with crumble being easier to prepare than the pastry needed for apple pie. [8]
Despite its relatively recent invention, apple crisp or crumble has become an American and British tradition especially during the autumn, when apples are plentiful.[ citation needed ] The dish is also very popular in Canada, especially in areas where berries and fruit are readily available.[ citation needed ]
Many other kinds of fruit crisps are also made, these may substitute other fruits, such as peaches, berries, or pears, for the apples. There are a number of desserts that employ apples with sweet toppings, but none of them are the same as apple crisp, making them not so much variants, but instead other related apple desserts.