Or was she a blondie? Or even a teapot?
Sometimes I worry that my brain is not connecting all its bits and pieces properly and today's post is an example of that, although on the plus side I learnt a few things along the way.
It all began with that glorious looking dessert above which is a Curtis Stone recipe in the June Coles Magazine for a Brown butter apple blondie with caramelised honey. I had bookmarked it to make some time soon. Maybe tonight in fact, as I feel like a dessert, although, I'm not really feeling like being clever so might do something much simpler with apples.
Anyway when looking for ideas for a post I picked it up and misread the title as Brown Betty, so launched into 'research' into Apple brown Betty, before realising halfway through that I was looking at the wrong thing. Really I should be looking at Blondies - which are like Brownies only a different colour, but I think I shall save that for another brown and blonde day.
So yes I shall make that dessert some time soon but today I will focus on Brown Betty, which actually doesn't have to be the exclusive domain of apples. Any fruit will do. Indeed it's just one of those home dishes contrived out of leftovers - breadcrumbs and apples mostly. It's definitely American and very like a crumble, although much easier. Just toss your fruit in sugar and flavourings - depending on what it is - plus a bit of alcohol or fruit juice. Then layer in a dish with breadcrumbs either just as they are or flavoured and/or mixed with other goodies, and bake it all in the oven. Breadcrumb layer on top of course.
Mind you there seemed - of course - to be a wide variety in ingredients and method too. Some didn't layer the fruit and breadcrumbs - so really it was a crumble and some didn't even do the breadcrumbs they just did a crumble mixture. LIke this lady who featured an Apple brown betty on her website called Small Town Woman, which I include (a) because it was the first recipe that popped up and (b) because she began by saying:
"In my opinion, apples make the world a better place."
which is a rather nice, if simple, thing to say.
So who indeed was Brown Betty? If indeed the name refers to a person at all. After all it could refer to the overall brownness of the dish, although why Betty?
The other theory - not proved in any way and really just pure speculation - is that the original cook was had brown skin - a slave? - and her name was Betty. We shall never know and maybe that's all to the good. It allows us to imagine stories as we eat our homely dessert.
As for the wide variety of methods - well as I was sort of saying yesterday, and often do:
"As much as we like to be definitive these old-fashioned desserts are “folk-food” passed down orally from mother to child and like all folk culture slight variations arise from kitchen to kitchen." Milk and Honey
So here are a few versions of varying degrees of authenticity beginning with the American website The Kitchen leading the way with Kristina Vänni's pretty 'authentic' Apple brown Betty with homemade breadrcumbs; Fruit Betty - Tom Hunt/The Guardian; Cherry and apricot brown Betty - Anna Higham/The Guardian; and Brown Betty tarts - Valli Little
And there's not much more to say on the subject really, except to say that next time you find yourself with a lot of stale bread and a glut of some kind of fruit it might be worth having a go.
However. Whilst I was looking for images, I saw a teapot.
Why a teapot I wondered? Well it seems that there is also a very famous teapot called the Brown Betty with a very venerable history which is described on the website Tea Happiness although I think she ignores the ancient Chinese origins of the teapot and that round shape. From China it travelled to Holland and from there to Britain and to Staffordshire where the clay was perfect. It is suggested that this teapot actually started the growth of the potteries in the five/six towns that make up the conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent - my university stomping ground. This occurred in the late 17th early 18th century when tea had become cheaper and a national obsession, which contnues to this day.
"The name Brown Betty describes a type of teapot with common characteristics of red Etruria Marl clay, a transparent or dark brown Rockingham Glaze and a familiar portly body." Ian McIntyre/Design Museum
The Rockingham glaze was created at the whim of the Marquis of Rockingham. Now I am not a tea drinker, but I do remember that teapot - even Habitat - the oh so fashionable furniture and household goods store of 60s London - apparently had a version designed by Sir Terence Conran.
It's popularity is down to its design:
"the globe shape of the pot that is so efficient at infusing loose leaf tea, the roughly cut spout that breaks the flow of water, preventing tea from dribbling back down the outside of the pot and the Rockingham glaze that concealed any dribbles that did, despite best efforts, escape." Ian McIntyre/Design Museum
There was a racehorse called Brown Betty too - painted by Thomas Percy Earl in the 19th century.
And speaking of art, there are two artists called Betty Brown - one an American naïf artist who died in 2011, and one an Irish artist who is still painting - those sort of almost gruesome portraits of ordinary people. Neither of them were brown. But then Brown is indeed a common surname.
Last of all a quote from Ruby Tandoh, which is probably worth a post of its own some day:
"About seventy percent of all human culinary ingenuity has been in pursuit of a flavour that can roughly be described as 'delicious brown."
POSTSCRIPT
August 11 - a beautiful sunny day this year.
2023 - maybe it was such a lovely day I spent it outside
2022 - Winter jam
2021 - Rock cakes
2016 - Coles Magazine on my iPad. No more alas.
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