A Good Appetite
An easy buttermilk skillet version and an upside-down take from Melissa Clark showcase the stone fruit’s versatility.
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Generally filled with bubbling fruit nestled into a buttery, sugary foundation, cobblers are beloved in the canon of homey desserts. The problem is, there’s no consensus about what, exactly, they are.
Recipe: Easy Buttermilk Peach Cobbler
For some cooking authorities, like the Virginia-born chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis, cobblers are baked summer peaches layered with raw pie dough to help thicken the juices, then topped with a flaky crust.
Others prefer syrupy berries covered in fluffy biscuits shaped like golden cobblestones, a likeness that may have inspired the name (or not; there’s no definitive etymology).
Then there are those who believe that cobblers consist of batter strewed with fruit, which bake up solid and caky with jammy pockets throughout.
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