If you ask three people what they call a dessert made with fruit—often apples— layered into a deep baking dish and topped with a mixture of oats, flour, butter, cinnamon, and lots of brown sugar, you might get one of three different answers: crisp; crumble; betty. Trying to get a clearer answer from half-a-dozen cookbooks only leads to more conflicting answers.

Going the other way, i.e. asking three people how they make an apple crisp, you will also get three differing answers, which was how Jordan and I found ourselves again in one of those matrimonial crises—not unlike the docking issue that I promised never to bring up in print again—that can test the strength of any wedding vow.

The last recipe I had used, a modified apple crisp square, came from an Eating Well magazine and had some unfortunate substitutions such as canola oil for butter and apple juice concentrate for sweetener; not what Jordan was looking for.

As it turned out, he went with his gut feelings, and 2/3’s of a bag of oats later, a pound of butter, and I don’t want to even think about how much brown sugar, he had a large baking dish filled with a thick layer of the packed oat mixture, topped with sliced apples, topped with another thick layer of packed down oat mixture.

We both called this “Apple Crisp,” although there was some debate as to whether it should have the bottom layer and whether he had too much topping for the amount of fruit.

Regardless of what we called it, the dessert was very good, although it is hard to imagine that anything with that much sugar and butter, topped with ice cream could taste terrible.

I decided right then and there to get down in writing my philosophy on the whole crisp-crumble-betty affair so that next year, when the air turns cool and thoughts of a comforting bowl of new-crop apples scented with cinnamon and sweet with butter and brown sugar begin to dance in my head, I will know what to call it and how to make it. Unless, of course, I have changed my mind by then!

The first order of business is to identify and separate out the cobblers. This is the group of baked fruit puddings that includes the slumps and grunts, pandowdies and buckles. This family has one trait in common: they all have a crust made with short pastry or biscuit mix. A cobbler is like a deep-dish pie without the bottom crust and baked in a casserole with thick pastry top or biscuit-like dumplings. In older cookbooks, it was sometimes known as a fruit pot pie. A pandowdy is similar except that the crust is broken up during baking so that the juices rise up and create a delicious, sweet glaze over the top. Slumps and grunts are stewed (i.e. cooked covered, often on top of the stove) and the pastry topping gets juicy and sweet.

Apple Brown Betty, forerunner of the crisp family of desserts, is one of the oldest known American desserts, popular in American Colonial days. The original recipes used buttered and sweetened bread crumbs layered into a baking dish with alternating layers of spiced fruit, ending with a crumb layer. This was a way for the frugal cooks of yore to use stale bread. To make this dessert moist, a healthy cup of either sherry or cider was poured over the top.

The origin of the name “betty” is unknown, although it is possible that it had something to do with the most popular teapot of the time, the Brown Betty, a very round pot made from special red clay from England; either that or someone’s well tanned aunt.

This brings us to crisps and crumbles. In general, neither should have a bottom crust; that would make it a pie. Crisps and crumbles both have a streusel topping. Streusel is a German word for “”sprinkle” or “strew.” This topping can be made simply from flour, sugar, and butter, or can be more substantial with oats and nuts.

After reading more than a dozen cookbooks and other magazines I can see that in general, and there will always be exceptions, a crumble will be made without oats while a crisp often uses oats or even other cereals.

A crumble topping is formed by cutting cold butter into the dry ingredients with fingers until the mixture has the consistency of granola. This is sprinkled loosely over the top of the fruit so that as it bakes, the juices can rise up and coat the clumps of topping, making them sweet and crisp.

A crisp topping is prepared in the same way accept with the addition of rolled oats or cereals such as granola.

This sounds all lovely and simple, but for every nine recipes that follow these rules, the tenth differs. I just found a recipe for a “cobbler” from Wolfgang Puck that uses a streusel topping with oats plus shortcake circles on top of this. You see; even he’s confused and he’s a famous chef!

It doesn’t really matter, does it; just as long as I can find my recipes for “it” the next time WE decide to make a fruit thingy.