History of Brownies

Few foods can claim such a long and colorful history, one that is just as captivating as its impish namesake.  The history of brownies begins with the history of chocolate, a food that was literally worshiped for thousands of years and eventually became the world’s most beloved confection.

The cacao tree is said to have originated in the Amazon, around 4,000 years ago, but later flourished throughout Central America.  To the first Mesoamerican inhabitants, the umbrella-shaped tree must have appeared magical.  Found nestled under the canopies of lush, tropical rain forests, the tree’s branches are laden with tiny orchids, the trunk covered in moss and colorful lichens.  On the trunk of the tree, waxy blossoms mature into clusters of large, multi-colored fruit, called pods.  The pods ripen to a golden or sometimes bright scarlet hue, and each pod contains up to fifty seeds, surrounded by a sweet, fruity pulp.  Although chocolate is made from the seeds or beans, monkeys and tropical birds flock to the trees in search of the sweet pulp. 

From approximately 1500 BC to 1500 AD, ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Mayan and Aztec, believed that cacao was not only a gift from the gods, but the actual food of the gods.  Included in their sacred books and religious ceremonies, cacao was revered for its health-giving properties.  Reserved primarily for royalty and the privileged, copious amounts of cacao were consumed each day in the form of an unsweetened beverage called xocoatl, or “bitter water.”  Also a symbol of wisdom and power, cacao beans were used as currency, as a form of taxation, and the hieroglyph for cacao adorned their tombs, temples and pottery.  
 
In the 1500s, the Aztecs played a tragic but pivotal roll in the introduction of cacao to Europe.  They believed that the god Quetzalcoatl had stolen the cacao tree from paradise, then descended on a beam from the Morning Star to give the treasure to humanity.  It is said that Emperor Montezuma II drank fifty cups of cacao a day, each served in a golden goblet that was used only once, and then thrown away.  When Hernando Cortéz arrived in search of gold, Montezuma II believed him to be the reincarnation of Quetzalcoatl and ordered a lavish banquet in his honor.  At the end of the meal, in a bitter twist of fate, Cortéz was presented the sacred cacao drink in a goblet of pure gold.  

After conquering the Aztecs, Cortéz shipped barrels of cacao beans and the tools to make the drink back to Spain.  When sugar and cinnamon were added to the recipe, what the Spanish called chocolate became an expensive but popular medicine among the aristocracy.  A hundred years later, chocolate became wildly fashionable in France, but for an entirely different reason.  In the 1600s, chocolate’s reputation as an aphrodisiac flourished in the French courts, and it became the main ingredient in lotions, potions and literature.  Then, in 1657, a Frenchman opened the first chocolate house in London.  By 1674, English chefs were adding cacao to their baked goods, creating the first form of eating chocolate and, perhaps, the forerunner to brownies.  After winning the hearts and palates of Europeans, a richly deserved honor was bestowed in 1753, when a Swedish biologist gave the cacao tree its botanical name, Theobroma cacao, meaning “food of the gods.” 

During the 1800s, European technology helped to make chocolate the divine confection we know today. In 1828, Conrad Van Houten invented a hydraulic press that separated the cocoa butter from the powder.  He also invented a process known as “Dutching.”  In 1847, Joseph Fry devised a way to put some of the cocoa butter back into the "Dutched" cocoa powder, creating the first, though rather grainy, chocolate candy.  In the 1870s, Daniel Peter produced the first milk chocolate by adding sweetened condensed milk.  Then, in 1879, Rodolphe Lindt perfected a process known as conching, which resulted in the first creamy chocolate fondant that would melt in your mouth.

While chocolate was taking Europe by storm, America was busy forging a new nation and fighting the Revolutionary War.  Although the first American chocolate factory, the Baker Company, opened in 1765, the next would not open until 1852.  However, it would not take long for America to catch up.  New technologies allowed for the mass production of chocolate, which lowered the price.  Soon cookbooks and advertisements were replete with recipes for all sorts of chocolate cakes, cookies, frostings, and candy.  Consequently, by the 1920s, chocolate was an American obsession.  In fact, the Roaring Twenties became the American decade for anything chocolate, including brownies. 

Few recipes are simply invented, but rather evolve over time.  One tradition holds that brownies are actually an American version of Scottish cocoa scones or perhaps an adaptation of an ancient recipe for soft and chewy gingerbread.  A prevailing legend has it that the first brownies appeared in 1912, when a housewife, Mildred Brown Schrumpf, nicknamed "Brownie," baked a chocolate cake that came out flat and gooey.  Although the debate over origin remains unresolved, it seems clear that, when it comes to brownies, the name came first. 

The earliest recipe for brownies appeared in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, in 1896, and in the Sears & Roebuck Catalog of 1897.  Based on a recipe from Fannie Farmer, it included eggs, a little flour, brown sugar, butter and molasses, but no chocolate.  The name, brownies, had been borrowed from a series of stories, written and illustrated by Palmer Cox, about mischievous but kind-hearted beings called Brownies.  The earliest recipe for brownies that included two squares of Baker’s chocolate and specified a 7-inch square pan didn’t appear until 1906, when Fannie Farmer revised her earlier recipe for that year’s edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.  A similar recipe appeared a year later in the Lowney’s Cook Book.  Maria Willett Howard, who had been trained by Fannie Farmer, was then employed by the Walter Lowney Chocolate Company.  Ms. Howard added an extra egg to Fanny Farmer's recipe and called it Lowney's Brownies.  She then varied the recipe again by adding an extra square of chocolate and renamed it Bangor Brownies.