Early Uses of the Word “Brownie”
It was in 1896 that the word “brownie” was first used to describe a baked confection. In The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, first published that year, Fannie Farmer applied the term to describe a molasses flavored cake with pecans. It wasn’t until the revised, 1906 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book was published that a recipe for chocolate brownies appeared. Although many believe that the first chocolate brownie recipe appeared in the 1897 Sears and Roebuck catalog, John Mariani, the author of The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, tells us that the reference to "brownies" in that catalog referred to chocolate candy that was named after a popular children's book by Palmer Cox.
Brownie Apocrypha
There are a couple of legends about the origin of brownies. One of the most popular is the tale of a housewife in Maine who forgot to add a leavening agent to her chocolate cake. Even though it was unexpectedly dense when she removed it from the oven, she cut it into squares and served it anyway, telling people as she served that she had made brownies. This version was triumphed by a home economist from Maine named Mildred Brown Schrumpf. Unfortunately for Mildred, or “Brownie,” as she was called, the earliest record she could find of brownies in a Maine cookbook was from 1912, several years after the Fannie Farmer book. There is a similar tale that originated in Boston, but no evidence to show the true origins of the chocolate treat.
The Brownie's Growing Popularity
It wasn’t until the 1920’s that brownies really became popular. Since then, the number of recipes for brownies has exploded. There are recipes for pecan pie brownies, peppermint brownies, butterscotch brownies, and almost every other kind of brownies imaginable. In recent years, giving a gift comprised of a glass jar with all the ingredients for brownies pre-measured and layered has become quite popular. The availability of pre-made brownie mixes, though, has made it more likely that the brownies you see at work or at bake-sales (like many baked goods these days) are not homemade.