Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

cobbler an American term for a deep-dish pie of cooked fruit (often apple or peach) with a thick crust on top. This usage seems to date back to the 1850s. Mariani (1994), comments:

This dish is called Bird’s nest pudding or ‘crow’s nest pudding’ in New England; it is served with a custard but no topping in Connecticut, with maple sugar in Massachusetts, and with a sour sauce in Vermont.

Cobbler dough can also be used as a topping for stewed meat dishes.
Cobbler can also refer to a kind of mixed alcoholic drink, and that meaning was recorded earlier than the above one.