My Mother's Peach Cobbler Recipe Had Three Different Versions on One Card
A stained index card, three handwritings, and the summer I finally figured out which one was the real cobbler.
When my mother died, the recipe box came to me because nobody else wanted to fight over it. It is a green tin box with a dent in the lid from the time my brother used it as a step stool. Inside are maybe two hundred cards, and the one everyone in the family asks about is the peach cobbler.
The trouble is that the card has three recipes on it. Not three variations neatly listed, but three layers of handwriting that argue with each other. My grandmother wrote the first version in pencil. My mother wrote over it in blue ballpoint. Then, sometime in the nineties, somebody added notes in red felt tip that I am fairly sure were also my mother, just angrier.
The pencil version
My grandmother's version is the oldest and the most vague. It says "a cup of flour, a cup of sugar, a cup of milk, a stick of butter, peaches." That is the whole recipe. There is no oven temperature, because she cooked on a woodstove until 1961 and the temperature was whatever the fire felt like.
This is the classic Southern batter cobbler. You melt the butter in the pan, pour the batter over it, and spoon the peaches on top. The batter rises up around the fruit while it bakes, and the edges go crisp and brown from the butter. It is not pretty. It looks like something that happened rather than something that was made.
The blue ink corrections
My mother crossed out "a cup of sugar" and wrote "3/4 if peaches are good." She added "1 1/2 tsp baking powder, pinch of salt," which suggests my grandmother used self-rising flour and never thought to say so. She also wrote "350, about 45 min, till brown," which is the single most useful line on the card.
Then there is a note in the margin: "Do NOT stir." I have no memory of anyone stirring a cobbler, so this must refer to some disaster before I was born. My aunt claims it was her, at fourteen, and that the result looked like peach oatmeal.
The red felt tip
The red notes are the ones that made me laugh out loud standing in my kitchen. They say: "Peel them. Yes really. Loretta." And underneath: "Nutmeg not cinnamon. Cinnamon is for apples."
So the card was talking to me. I had apparently, at some family supper I don't remember, made the cobbler with the peach skins on and cinnamon in it, and my mother wrote her objections down for posterity.
What I actually make now
After a summer of testing, here is the version I settled on, and I think all three women would accept it, grudgingly:
- One stick of salted butter, melted in a 9 by 13 inch dish while the oven heats to 350 degrees
- One cup of flour, three quarters of a cup of sugar, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder, a pinch of salt, one cup of whole milk, whisked smooth
- Four cups of ripe peaches, peeled and sliced, tossed with two tablespoons of sugar, a squeeze of lemon and a few gratings of nutmeg
Pour the batter over the hot butter. Do not stir. Spoon the peaches and their juice over the top. Bake about forty five minutes, until the top is deep gold and the edges are pulling away and crackling.
I serve it warm with cold cream poured over, not ice cream, because that is how my grandmother did it and some things I am not going to fix. The card is back in the tin. I have added a fourth handwriting, in green, that says only: "All three were right."
