This Chicago Hotel Invented The Brownie In The 1800s

Brownies' marriage of rich chocolatey goodness and a handheld, easy-to-eat shape has made them one of the most beloved all-American treats. This mainstay of bake sales and backyard barbecues is simple to make, no matter whether you're on the fudgy or cakey brownies side, and they can also be given a boost with added secret ingredients. But despite their simplicity, brownies have a high-class origin, created at Chicago's luxurious Palmer House hotel in the late 19th century.

The hotel opened in 1871 as a wedding gift from wealthy businessman Potter Palmer to his wife, Bertha. In a stroke of bad luck, it burned down 13 days later in the Great Chicago Fire, but was rebuilt for a 1873 reopening. Two decades later, the World's Columbian Exposition world's fair was coming to Chicago in 1893, and Bertha was chair of its Board of Lady Managers. She asked Palmer House pastry chef Joseph Sehl to create a portable dessert for box lunches in the Exposition's Women's Pavilion. Bertha had something in mind similar to chocolate cake, describing it as something like a cookie, but denser and more decadent with chocolate (per Hilton's website).

Sehl developed the brownie recipe — although they weren't called that then — which is still used at Palmer House, now owned by Hilton Hotels. The rich, fudgy brownies are made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, and 60% dark couverture chocolate, a high-quality type of chocolate with a higher cocoa butter percentage (and the best kind for chocolate-coated strawberries). The batter is covered with chopped walnuts, and once baked, the pre-cut brownies are brushed with hot syrup made from apricot preserves, gelatin, and water.

Guests and visitors can order the Palmer House Brownie at the hotel's Lockwood Restaurant or the Lockwood Lobby Bar, or to-go at the Lockwood Express shop, where they can also pick up a Bertha's Brownie Latte. The restaurant serves Bertha's Brownie Pancakes with crumbled brownies on top for breakfast, and patrons at both the restaurant and the Lobby Bar can order a special Old Fashioned cocktail called a Brownie Old Fashioned. It's made with rye, Frangelico, and crème de cacao, and garnished with maraschino cherries and mini brownies.

Palmer House says the first use of the term 'brownies' was in a 1898 Sears Roebuck catalog published in Chicago. However, the first cookbook recipe for something called brownies was in Fannie Farmer's 1896 "The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook," although the blondie-like dessert didn't include chocolate. There were other brownie references and recipes that popped up over the next decade, including an 1898 ad in the Kansas City Journal, recipes in the 1899 Machias Cookbook in Maine, and a 1904 Service Club cookbook in Chicago. But it was when Farmer published an updated version of her cookbook in 1906 that included a brownie recipe with chocolate that they began to become more widely known.

As for the name's origin, it's theorized that it might have come from the popular 1887 book, "The Brownies: Their Book," about mischievous elf-like creatures. In it, the brownies would steal things, and people would leave treats for them, called brownies' food, to get the items back.