Chocolate brownie

For the drink, see Brownie Chocolate Drink.

Chocolate brownie

A homemade brownie
Type	Dessert bar
Place of origin	United States
Region or state	Worldwide
Main ingredients	Flour, butter, eggs, chocolate or cocoa powder, sugar
Variations	Blondie
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

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

Early history

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

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] Biochemist Shirley Corriher credits Fannie Farmer as the creator of brownies, stating that she had created them by lowering the amount of flour in her chocolate cookie recipe. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book version from 1896 featured a recipe for brownies, although they contained molasses and nuts, not chocolate. ^[4] Brownies in this style are now known as "blondies", derived from the term "blond brownies", which appeared in the mid-1900s. ^[5] 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.

In the 1906 version of the cookbook, Farmer changed the recipe, introducing chocolate. ^[6] Additionally, Home Cookery (1904, Laconia, New Hampshire), the Service Club Cook Book (1904, Chicago, Illinois), and The Boston Globe (1905) were one of the first to publish recipes about brownies. These recipes produced a relatively mild and cake-like brownie.^{[ citation needed ]} Farmer trained Maria Willett Howard ultimately created Lowney's Brownies for Walter M. Lowney Co. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America reported that her recipe was often used in New England before 1912. ^[6]

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]

One legend about the creation of brownies is that of Bertha Palmer, a prominent Chicago socialite whose husband owned the Palmer House Hotel. ^[13] 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.

Modern day

During the 1960s, brownies were introduced to TV dinners. ^[14]

Preparation

Mixing melted butter with chocolate to make a chocolate brownie

Early recipes, such as Lowney's Brownies, included chocolate, butter, eggs, salt, sugar, vanilla, flour, and chopped nuts, while modern recipes also include brown sugar. ^[6] The 1976 edition of Lizzie Black Kander's The Settlement Cook Book also includes cocoa powder as a replacement for chocolate, baking powder, and walnuts. The book states that butter and chocolate should be melted together, while beaten eggs and sugar should be added to a separate mixture. The two should then be combined and beaten again, after which the remaining ingredients should be added. ^[15] Corriher wrote that brownies can sometimes also include dried cherries and coffee beans. ^[16]

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. ^[17]

See also

• Bar cookie
• Fudge
• Hash brownie
• List of baked goods
• Kladdkaka

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. Corriher 2008, pp. 407–408.
5. Clark, Melissa (2012-10-03). "Blondies". Saveur . Retrieved 2024-07-01.
6. Corriher 2008, p. 408.
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. Colby, Terri (August 31, 2018). "Taste The Palmer House Brownies For A Bit Of Chicago History". Forbes . Retrieved June 9, 2020.
14. Maynard 2007, p. 205.
15. Black Kander 1976, p.  165.
16. Corriher 2008, p. 407.
17. 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.
• Black Kander, Lizzie (1976) [1901]. The Settlement Cook Book . Simon and Schuster. 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. 407–415. 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.