Philosophizing About Food With Francine: A Peach Dessert Steeped in Tradition

by Francine Black

Lovely golden peaches just waiting to be baked into some type of dessert. What will it be?

I was thinking of some type of deconstructed pie, such as a “crumble”, a “crisp”, a “cobbler”, a “Betty”, a “grunt” aka a “slump”, a “pandowdy” or a “sinker”! Depending on which part of the country we visit, these names all describe a baking dish filled with seasonal fruit and topped with streusel, drop biscuits, spoonfuls of cake batter, or buttered oats and nuts.

My mother-in-law, Dora Braham Black, made a lovely “crisp” and the baked topping was as its name suggested. She sliced fruit into evenly precise pieces in her meticulous way, and topped it all with a combination of oats, butter and brown sugar, and just the barest bit of flour. If she had them on hand, she would add some chopped pecans to the oat mixture.

It seems her mother and aunts would bring this dessert to the church socials in Morgantown, West Virginia to everyone’s delight.

I must add, and with deep gratitude, that it was from Dora’s mother, Grandma Pearl Braham, that I learned to bake pies and crisps.

Those dear ladies knew a thing or two about cooking and baking!

High in the mountains above Bally, where the dense groves of treetops seem to touch the sky, is Francine Black, Boyertown’s own version of chef Julia Child. Her daily activities reflect the things she most values: family and friends, music, and lovingly prepared food.

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