History of the Chocolate Brownie

Next I looked at the history of the brownie. There was a recipe for a treat called brownies in the 1896 Boston Cooking School Cookbook, but it does not include any chocolate in the recipe. Instead there were molasses which made the mixture brown, so they were called brownies.

1896 'Boston Cooking School Cookbook' Brownie Recipe

 1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup Porto Rico molasses
1 egg well beaten
7/8 cup bread flour
1 cup pecan meat cut in pieces
Mix ingredients in order given. Bake in small, shallow fancy cake tins, garnishing top of each cake with one-half pecan.

There are many tales on how the first brownie was created; a chef mistakenly added melted chocolate to a batch of biscuits...a cook was making a cake but didn’t have enough flour. The tale which is the most highly regarded is one about a housewife. The first brownies came about when a house wife, from Bangor Maine forgot to add leavening to her chocolate cake. Some say she didn't  want to admit her mistake or that she didn't want to throw out a cake which didn't rise. So she cut it into bars and served it. This theory is thought to be true as 6 years later (1906) a nearly identical recipe (to the housewives who forgot to add the baking powder) for brownies was published in a cookbook from Bangor, by one of America most famous cookbook writers Fannie Merritt Farmer.

1906 'Boston Cooking School Cookbook' Brownie Recipe

 1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup Porto Rico molasses
1 egg well beaten
7/8 cup bread flour

2 squares of melted chocolate
1 cup pecan meat cut in pieces
Mix ingredients in order given. Bake in small, shallow fancy cake tins, garnishing top of each cake with one-half pecan.

The second brownie recipe was created by Maria Willett Howard, who was trained by Fannie Merritt Farmer. Farmer added an extra egg to Howard's recipe to create the Lowney Chocolate Company brownie recipe. According to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink this is the recipe which was most often reprinted in New England community up to 1912. 

Here are the two recipes which were published in Lowney's Cookbook in 1907. The two recipes are similarie but the quantities for each ingredient are slightly different.

Bangor Brownies (Lowney’s Cook Book 1907)

1/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

3 squares chocolate

1/2 to 3/4 cup flour

1 cup nut meats (nuts with the shells removed)

1/4 teaspoon salt

 Put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat until well mixed. Spread evenly in a buttered baking pan. Bake and cut in stripes.

Lowney’s Brownies (Lowney’s Cook Book 1907)

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 squares Chocolate

2 eggs

1/2 cup nut meats (nuts with the shell removed)

1/2 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

 Cream the butter, add remaining ingredients, spread on buttered sheet and bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Cut in squares as soon as taken from the oven.