Chocolate brownie
Baked chocolate confection
Chocolate brownie
A homemade brownie
TypeDessert bar
Place of originUnited States
Region or stateWorldwide
Main ingredientsFlour, butter, eggs, chocolate or cocoa powder, sugar
VariationsBlondie
  • Cookbook: Chocolate brownie
  •   Media: Chocolate brownie

A chocolate brownie, or simply a brownie, is a chocolate baked dessert bar. Brownies come in a variety of forms and may be either fudgy or cakey, depending on their density. Brownies often have a glossy "skin" on their upper crust and may include ingredients such as nuts, frosting, or chocolate chips. A variation containing brown sugar and vanilla 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 in the country during the first half of the 20th century.

Serving

A stack of chocolate brownies
Store-bought brownies

Brownies are typically eaten by hand or with utensils, and may be accompanied by a glass of milk, served warm with ice cream (à la mode), topped with whipped cream, or sprinkled with powdered sugar. In North America, they are common homemade treats and they are also popular in restaurants, ice cream parlors, and coffeehouses.[citation needed] The same popularity in cafes is seen in Sweden.[1]

In the Southern United States, brownies prepared from cake mix are a rare homemade dessert eaten on weekdays.[2]

History

During the 1880s in the United States, dinner parties themed around the color brown were popular events. Following the standard set in lifestyle magazines, hosts served brown dishes—bread, soup, turkey—including sautéed mushrooms, which were then known colloquially as "brownies". By the following decade, the event had evolved into a feast of sweets under the name "Brownie Banquets", parties decorated with figurines of illustrator Palmer Cox's comic characters The Brownies. Chocolate ice cream, graham crackers, and brownies were common elements with "brownie" now used to refer to a molasses cake.[3]

The first-known printed use of the word brownie to describe a dessert appeared in the 1896 version of by , in reference to molasses cakes baked individually in tin molds. However, Farmer's brownies did not contain chocolate.[4] Brownies in this style are now known as "blondies", derived from the term "blond brownies", which appeared in the mid-1900s.[5]

One legend about the creation of brownies is that of Bertha Palmer, a prominent Chicago socialite whose husband owned the Palmer House Hotel.[6] In 1893, Palmer asked a pastry chef for a dessert suitable for ladies attending the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. She requested a dessert that would be smaller than a piece of cake, and easily eaten from boxed lunches. The result was the Palmer House Brownie, made of chocolate with walnuts and an apricot glaze. The Palmer House Hotel still serves this dessert to patrons made from the same recipe. The name was given to the dessert some time after 1893, but was not used by cookbooks or journals at the time.

In 1899, the first-known recipe was published in Machias Cookbook.[citation needed] 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.

Mixing melted butter with chocolate to make a chocolate brownie

The earliest-known published recipes for a modern-style chocolate brownie appeared in Home Cookery (1904, Laconia, New Hampshire), the Service Club Cook Book (1904, Chicago, Illinois), The Boston Globe (April 2, 1905 p. 34), and the 1906 edition of Fannie Farmer's cookbook. These recipes produced a relatively mild and cake-like brownie.

Brownies as they appeared in the 1903 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, made from molasses.

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 story states was the hometown of a housewife who created the original brownie recipe. Maine food educator and columnist Mildred Brown Schrumpf was the main proponent of the theory that brownies were invented in Bangor.[a] 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,[11] 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".[12]

During the 1960s, brownies were introduced to TV dinners.[13]

Adaptations

In North American Jewish communities where brownies are a frequent element in post-synagogue spreads, kosher brownies appropriate for Passover consumption feature prominently in community recipe collections and cookbooks.[14]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Numerous works erroneously credit Schrumpf herself as the inventor.[7][8][9][10]

References

  1. ^ Villagran Backman 2011, p. 362.
  2. ^ Dupree 2011, p. 353.
  3. ^ Parks 2017, p. 53.
  4. ^ "Who Invented the Brownie?". www.mentalfloss.com. 2014-11-13. Retrieved 2019-12-23.
  5. ^ Clark, Melissa (2012-10-03). "Blondies". Saveur. Retrieved 2024-07-01.
  6. ^ Colby, Terri. "Taste The Palmer House Brownies For A Bit Of Chicago History". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  7. ^ Clegg 1998.
  8. ^ Snow 2003.
  9. ^ Holbrook 2005.
  10. ^ Sheraton 2015, p. 1202.
  11. ^ Smith 2007, p. 71.
  12. ^ Smith 2013, p. 220.
  13. ^ Maynard 2007, p. 205.
  14. ^ Deutsch & Saks 2008, p. 77, 97.

Sources

  • Maynard, Nora (2007). Allen, Gary; Albala, Ken (eds.). The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-06917-8.
  • Amiet, Ernest E.; Gregory, Walter L. (2011). The Palmer House Cook Book: 1022 Original Recipes For Home Use. Literary Licensing. ISBN 978-1-258-19199-3.
  • Black Kander, Lizzie (1976). The Settlement Cook Book. Simon and Schuster. pp. 165. ISBN 978-0-671-22087-7.
  • Corriher, Shirley (2008). BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes. Simon and Schuster. pp. 409–415. ISBN 978-1-4165-6078-4.
  • Clegg, Jo-Ann (27 February 1998). "Brownie connection just doesn't pan out". The Virginian-Pilot. Archived from the original on 20 February 2016. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
  • Davidson, Alan; Jaine, Tom; Vannithone, Soun (2014). The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-967733-7.
  • Deutsch, Jonathan; Saks, Rachel D. (2008). Jewish American Food Culture. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-34319-3.
  • Doutre-Roussel, Chloé (2006). The Chocolate Connoisseur: For Everyone With A Passion for Chocolate. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. ISBN 978-1-58542-488-7.
  • Dupree, Nathalie (2011). "United States: The South". In Albala, Ken (ed.). Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-313-37627-6.
  • Farmer, Fannie (1918). The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (PDF). Little, Brown, and Company.
  • Geczy, Adam; Karaminas, Vicki (2022). Gastrofashion from Haute Cuisine to Haute Couture: Fashion and Food (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Visual Arts. ISBN 978-1-350-14750-8.
  • Goff, H. Douglas; Hartel, Richard W. (2013). Ice Cream (7th ed.). Springer. ISBN 978-1-4614-6096-1.
  • Heatter, Maida (1999). Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts. Andrews McMeel Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8362-7861-3.
  • Heatter, Maida (2011). Maida Heatter's Cookies. Andrews McMeel Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4494-0115-3.
  • Holbrook, Carolyn (21 June 2005). "Nothing beats a brownie". The Age. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
  • Kiple, Kenneth F., ed. (2000). The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 978-1-139-05863-6.
  • Linford, Jenny; Pattullo, Alice (2018). The Seven Culinary Wonders of the World: A History of Honey, Salt, Chile, Pork, Rice, Cacao, and Tomato. Smithsonian Books. ISBN 978-1-58834-642-1.
  • Saekel, Karola. "Panel Gives Baking Mixes a High Score". San Francisco Chronicle.
  • Linford, Jenny (2018). The Nissing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour. Particular Books. ISBN 978-1-84614-897-2.
  • McGee, Harold (2004). On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-80001-1.
  • Parks, Stella (2017). Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts (1st ed.). W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-23986-7.
  • Shapiro, Laura (2004). Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950's America. Viking. ISBN 978-0-14-303491-9.
  • Sheraton, Mimi (2015). 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List. Workman Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7611-8306-8.
  • Snow, Jane (30 April 2003). "Seeking the ultimate brownies". Akron Beacon Journal. Archived from the original on 20 February 2016. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
  • Smith, Andrew F., ed. (2007). The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-988576-3.
  • Smith, Andrew F., ed. (2013). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-973496-2.
  • Teubner, Christian (1997). The Chocolate Bible. Studio. ISBN 978-0-670-87371-5.
  • Villagran Backman, Gabriela (2011). "Sweden". In Albala, Ken (ed.). Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-313-37627-6.
  • Westmoreland, Susan, ed. (2007). The Good Housekeeping Cookbook. Hearst Books. ISBN 978-1-58816-561-9.
  • Wilkinson-Weber, Clare M.; DeNicola, Alicia Ory, eds. (2016). Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-4725-9485-3.
  • Willett Howard, Maria (2010). Lowney's Cook Book. Pelican Publishing. ISBN 978-1-58980-756-3.
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