In celebration of the State Fair of Texas opening this month, we are going to take a look at the mammoth Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Starting off the list of innovations at the Columbia Exposition of 1893, we have BROWNIES. I, personally, hate brownies, but y’all seem to love them, so here is the story:
Bertha Honore Palmer, of Palmer House hotel fame, was an organizer of the Women’s Building at the Fair – a prestigious position. She wanted to sell boxed lunches to the ladies visiting the hall, but needed a manageable dessert for ladies wearing fancy clothes and white gloves. she commanded the hotel kitchen staff to come up with a solution – and the brownie was born! It could be eaten daintily with no threat of a fruit filling or pudding sliding about. Within a few years, brownies were all the rage in cookbooks.
(Side note: Bertha Honore married Potter Palmer when she was 21. He was 44. And stupid rich. However, she was seen as the organizing and level-headed force behind much of his success. 12 years after he died, she had doubled his vast holdings single-handedly.)
