A chocolate brownie or simply a brownie is a chocolate
baked
Baking is a method of preparing food that uses dry heat, typically in an oven, but can also be done in hot ashes, or on hot stones. The most common baked item is bread but many other types of foods can be baked. Heat is gradually transferre ...
confection. Brownies come in a variety of forms and may be either fudgy or cakey, depending on their density. Brownies often, but not always, have a glossy "skin" on their upper crust. They may also include nuts, frosting, cream cheese, chocolate chips, or other ingredients. A variation made with
brown sugar
Brown sugar is unrefined or partially refined soft sugar.
Brown Sugar may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Brown Sugar'' (1922 film), a 1922 British silent film directed by Fred Paul
* ''Brown Sugar'' (1931 film), a 1931 ...
and
vanilla
Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus '' Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla ('' V. planifolia'').
Pollination is required to make the plants produce the fruit from whic ...
rather than chocolate in the batter is called a blond brownie or
blondie. The brownie was developed in the United States at the end of the 19th century and popularized there during the first half of the 20th century.
They are typically eaten by hand, often accompanied by milk, served warm with ice cream (
a la mode
Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern Engl ...
), topped with whipped cream, or sprinkled with powdered sugar and fudge. In North America, they are common homemade treats and they are also popular in restaurants and
coffeehouse
A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee of various types, notably espresso, latte, and cappuccino. Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks, such as iced coffee and iced tea, as well as other non-ca ...
s.
History
One legend about the creation of brownies is that of
Bertha Palmer, a prominent
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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socialite whose husband owned the
Palmer House Hotel. In 1893, Palmer asked a pastry chef for a dessert suitable for ladies attending the Chicago
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
. She requested a cake-like confection smaller than a piece of cake that could be included in boxed lunches. The result was the Palmer House Brownie, made of chocolate with
walnuts and an
apricot
An apricot (, ) is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus '' Prunus''.
Usually, an apricot is from the species '' P. armeniaca'', but the fruits of the other species in ''Prunus'' sect. ''Armeniaca'' are al ...
glaze. The modern Palmer House Hotel serves a dessert to patrons made from the same recipe. The name was given to the dessert sometime after 1893, but was not used by cook books or journals at the time.
The first-known printed use of the word "brownie" to describe a dessert appeared in the 1896 version of the ''
Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
The ''Boston Cooking-School Cook Book'' (1896) by Fannie Farmer is a 19th-century general reference cookbook which is still available both in reprint and in updated form. It was particularly notable for a more rigorous approach to recipe writing ...
'' by
Fannie Farmer, in reference to
molasses
Molasses () is a viscous substance resulting from refining sugarcane or sugar beets into sugar. Molasses varies in the amount of sugar, method of extraction and age of the plant. Sugarcane molasses is primarily used to sweeten and flavour foods ...
cakes baked individually in tin
molds. However, Farmer's brownies did not contain chocolate.
In 1899, the first-known recipe was published in ''
Machias Cookbook.'' They were called "Brownie's Food". The recipe appears on page 23 in the cake section of the book. Marie Kelley from Whitewater, Wisconsin, created the recipe.
The earliest-known published recipes for a modern style chocolate brownie appeared in the ''Home Cookery'' (1904, Laconia, NH), ''Service Club Cook Book'' (1904, Chicago, IL), ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' (April 2, 1905 p. 34), and the 1906 edition of Fannie Farmer's cookbook. These recipes produced a relatively mild and cake-like brownie.
By 1907, the brownie was well established in a recognizable form, appearing in ''Lowney's Cook Book'' by Maria Willet Howard (published by Walter M. Lowney Company, Boston) as an adaptation of the Boston Cooking School recipe for a "Bangor Brownie". It added an extra egg and an additional square of chocolate, creating a richer, fudgier dessert. The name "Bangor Brownie" appears to have been derived from the town of
Bangor, Maine, which an
apocryphal
Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered ...
story states was the hometown of a housewife who created the original brownie recipe. Maine food educator and columnist
Mildred Brown Schrumpf
Mildred Brown "Brownie" Schrumpf (January 24, 1903 – March 2, 2001) was an American home economist, food educator, and author. Named the "Unofficial Ambassador of Good Eating" by the Maine Department of Agriculture, she wrote a weekly food colum ...
was the main proponent of the theory that brownies were invented in Bangor. While ''The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink'' (2007) refuted Schrumpf's premise that "Bangor housewives" had created the brownie, citing the publication of a brownie recipe in a 1905
Fannie Farmer cookbook, in its second edition, ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America'' (2013) said it had discovered evidence to support Schrumpf's claim, in the form of several 1904 cookbooks that included a recipe for "Bangor Brownies".
In 2021, the
food science journalist and home cookery YouTuber
Adam Ragusea
Adam Ragusea ( ; born March 22, 1982) is an American YouTuber who creates videos about food recipes, food science, and culinary culture. Until 2020, Ragusea was a professor of journalism at Mercer University.
Personal life
Ragusea grew up in Sta ...
conducted a series of experiments to discover why modern brownies tend to form a desirably glossy "skin" on their upper crust. In a video reporting his findings, Ragusea asserted that the "skin" was the result of making a batter of high viscosity, with low levels of moisture and sugar well-dissolved into the mix.
See also
*
List of baked goods
*
Hash brownie
Notes
References
Sources
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External links
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{{Cakes
American desserts
Chocolate desserts