A Crisp, Made Truly Crisp (Published 2008) (2024)

THE irony of a fruit crisp is that it’s usually not, nor is a fruit crumble necessarily crumbly. Most crisps and crumbles (two names for essentially the same thing) are squishy and jammy, with a luscious fruity cushion beneath a shaggy brown-sugar blanket that might contain a few nuts, with or without oats, as a vague attempt at crunch.

Because I adore these fruit-filled desserts, and have never demanded exactitude in the naming of baked goods, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to complain. But a friend got me thinking when she described her yen for a truly crispy crumble — or crumbly crisp.

To keep the wet fruit from softening the topping, my friend said, she bakes the crumbly bits separately from the filling.

“You don’t get pasty mush where the topping meets the fruit, and there’s much more textural contrast,” she said.

I was intrigued. So I tried her recipe, which called for baking streusel-like crumbs on a cookie sheet, then sprinkling them over the syrupy baked fruit.

Crunchy as they were, the crumbs reminded me of Grape Nuts, fine for breakfast but not for dessert. Also, baking fruit and crumbs apart meant that the flavors never got a chance to meld, and I missed the way the filling bubbles up, coating some of the crumbs with puddles of sticky goodness.