She would bake apples until they were soft, mash them, mix them with corn meal and fry them. Traditional New England desserts have all types of charming names, such as flummeries, fools, slumps and crunches. Our favorite name is a New England tradition, the grunt. Legend has it that when removed from the oven this fruit and biscuit dessert makes a sound that resembled a grunt. We've baked a lot of grunts, but we've gotten nary a peep.
Grunts are yet another way the Pilgrims and first settlers found to use cranberries.
Cranberries provide a tart flavor and brilliant color and apples provide sweetness and crunch. Using refrigerated biscuit dough, grunts are fast and simple to prepare. There is an interesting phenomenon associated with grunt preparation. The fruit filling can be prepared hours ahead of time, as can the biscuit dough. However, grunts themselves lose their tastiness if not served pretty promptly after removal from the oven.