Hmmm. A history of a brownies…
Today’s brownies, from brilliant pastry minds like Ms. Greenspan, Nick Malgieri and Alice Medrich, bear little resemblance to the tough bake-sale squares of yore: they contain much more chocolate and less flour. Sheila Brass is a culinary historian who, with her sister, Marilynn, wrote “Heirloom Baking With the Brass Sisters” in 2006, which traces the evolution of American baking in the 20th century through their own family history.
“Our father loved the Bangor brownies,” Ms. Brass said. Some legends place the first brownies in Bangor, Me. The classic recipe, dating to the early 1900s, calls for just two ounces of chocolate. To a modern palate, that amount is practically imperceptible. Older recipes reflect the ingredients of their time, when chocolate for the masses was still new, exotic and relatively expensive. The first American chocolate factories were concentrated in New England, and it was there that the brownie first caught the public imagination, in the 1920s.
Julia Moskin “Simple Pleasure, American Style” – New York Times.