A Brown Betty is a simple American dessert

Dessert

In cultures around the world, dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food. The word comes from the French language as dessert and this from Old French desservir, "to clear the table" and "to serve." Common Western desserts include cakes, biscuits,...

 made from fruit (usually apple) and sweetened crumbs that is thought to date back to Colonial times.

It consists of a baked pudding

Pudding

Pudding most often refers to a dessert, but it can also be a savory dish.In the United States, pudding characteristically denotes a sweet milk-based dessert similar in consistency to egg-based custards, though it may also refer to other types such as bread and rice pudding.In the United Kingdom and...

 made with layers of sweetened and spiced fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 and buttered bread

Bread

Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...

 crumbs. It is usually served with a lemon

Lemon

The lemon is both a small evergreen tree native to Asia, and the tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and non-culinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...

 sauce

Sauce

In cooking, a sauce is liquid, creaming or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods. Sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to another dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsus, meaning salted...

 or whipped cream

Whipped cream

Whipped cream is cream that has been beaten by a mixer, whisk, or fork until it is light and fluffy. Whipped cream is often sweetened and sometimes flavored with vanilla, in which case it may be called Chantilly cream or crème Chantilly ....

. The most familiar version is the Apple Brown Betty, made with sliced apples and brown sugar

Brown sugar

Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white...

. Other popular fruits are berries

Berry

The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary. Grapes are an example. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. They may have one or more carpels with a thin covering and fleshy interiors....

, and pear

Pear

The pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....

s.

A Brown Betty is similar to a cobbler

Cobbler (food)

thumb|Apple Cobbler.Cobbler refers to a variety of dishes, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom, consisting of a fruit or savoury filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a batter, biscuit, or pie crust before being baked...

 or a bread pudding

Bread pudding

Bread pudding is a bread-based dessert popular in many countries' cuisine, including that of Great Britain, France, Belgium, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Malta, Argentina, Louisiana Creole, and the southern United States...

.

A Brown Betty dessert is unfavorably mentioned in J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980....

's 1951 classic novel The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...

, where it is described as typical unpleasant boarding school fare. On the King of the Hill

King of the Hill

King of the Hill is an American animated dramedy series created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, that ran from January 12, 1997, to May 6, 2010, on Fox network. It centers on the Hills, a working-class Methodist family in the fictional small town of Arlen, Texas...

animated comedy series, the character Peggy Hill claims to make the best Brown Betty in Texas.

Also, on the Fringe

Fringe (TV series)

Fringe is an American science fiction television series created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The series follows a Federal Bureau of Investigation "Fringe Division" team based in Boston, Massachusetts under the supervision of Homeland Security...

 episode Brown Betty

Brown Betty (Fringe)

"Brown Betty" is the 20th episode of the second season of the American science fiction drama television series Fringe, and is the only one of the series performed as a musical. The episode was written by co-showrunners Jeff Pinkner and J. H. Wyman, and consulting producer Akiva Goldsman. It was...

, Dr. Walter Bishop creates his own strain of marijuana and names it after the dessert.

Henry Haller, White House Chef

White House Executive Chef

The White House Executive Chef is responsible for the planning, managing and preparing of all menus and meals for the First Family and their private entertaining, and official state functions at the White House, the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United...

 from 1965 to 1986, recounted in his cook book that Nancy Reagan

Nancy Reagan

Nancy Davis Reagan is the widow of former United States President Ronald Reagan and was First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989....

's favorite dessert was Apple Brown Betty.

External links

• Apple Brown Betty recipe