The filling goes into a baking dish and the topping is dropped or laid over it in pieces, so the surface bakes up uneven. Fruit cobblers are named for their fruit: peach, blackberry, blueberry. In Britain and the Commonwealth the topping is usually scone dough, and savory cobblers of beef or lamb are common.
The usual account says English settlers in America, lacking the means to make suet puddings, covered stewed fillings in a Dutch oven with pastry and later with biscuits. A possible first printed recipe appears in Lettice Bryan’s The Kentucky Housewife of 1839 as “Peach Pot Pie or Cobler.” During the Second World War Britain’s Ministry of Food promoted cobblers and crumbles because they used less fat than pastry.
On 8 May 2013 the Texas House adopted H.C.R. 102 by 147 to 0, and the Senate followed on 17 May by 31 to 0. The resolution names peach cobbler the official cobbler of Texas and lists other names the dish has gone by, including Brown Betty, the Grump, the Buckle and the Sonker.