Blackberry and Apple Crumble

the definitive British autumn pudding: hedgerow blackberries and tart Bramley apples baked beneath a thick, golden, buttery crumble and served hot with custard or cream

Origin: England

From the journey of Blackberry.

The crumble is one of the great thrifty puddings of the British kitchen, and blackberry and apple is its definitive expression. It is a dish born of the September hedgerow and the kitchen-garden tree ripening in the same weeks: the wild bramble, gathered free from the lanes, and the tart cooking apple, the collapsing golden Bramley above all, that lends the body and the balancing sharpness the soft, scented, deeply coloured blackberry cannot give on its own. The two fruits genuinely need each other, and the pairing is old and instinctive across the whole of Britain and Ireland. The crumble topping itself is a twentieth-century simplification, a rubble of flour, butter, and sugar strewn over the fruit in place of a pastry lid, quicker to make and requiring no rolling; it is thought to have spread during the rationing of the Second World War, when fat and sugar were short and a thin crumble stretched further than a pie crust, and it has never left the British table since. A crumble is judged by its contrasts: the topping crisp and sandy and golden above, the fruit soft and tart and swimming in its own dark juice below, and, poured over the whole, a jug of hot custard or a spoon of thick cold cream.

Ingredients

Fruit

  • 500 g Bramley or other tart cooking apples, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks
  • 300 g blackberries
  • 75 g caster sugar
  • 1 tbsp plain flour

Crumble

  • 200 g plain flour
  • 125 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
  • 100 g demerara or light brown sugar
  • 1 pinch salt

To Serve

  • 300 ml hot custard or cold double cream, to serve

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 190°C (170°C fan). Put the apple chunks in a saucepan with a splash of water and 25 g of the caster sugar and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes, just until the apples begin to soften at the edges but still hold their shape. Take off the heat.
  2. Tip the softened apple and its juices into a buttered baking dish, scatter over the blackberries, the remaining 50 g caster sugar, and the tablespoon of flour, and fold together gently. Level the surface.
  3. Make the crumble: put the 200 g flour, cubed butter, and a pinch of salt in a bowl and rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs. Stir through the demerara sugar.
  4. Scatter the crumble evenly over the fruit in a thick, loose layer, without pressing it down. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the topping is crisp and golden brown and the fruit is bubbling up dark and thick around the edges.
  5. Let the crumble settle for 10 minutes out of the oven, then serve hot, with plenty of hot custard or a spoon of thick cold cream.

Notes

The ratio of apple to blackberry is a matter of taste and of what the hedgerow yields; roughly two parts apple to one of blackberry gives the best balance of body and scent, but a glut of brambles can push the blackberry higher. For a nuttier topping, replace a third of the flour with rolled oats or ground almonds, though a topping made largely of oats is properly a crisp rather than a crumble. The unbaked crumble topping freezes well and can be strewn straight from the freezer onto the fruit.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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