You might think you don’t care about the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which was held in Chicago.
But let me tell you about some of the now-cherished items that debuted there: Cream of Wheat, Juicy Fruit gum, the chocolate bar (Hershey’s), Aunt Jemima Pancakes, the #2 yellow pencil, Shredded Wheat, the automatic dishwasher, Cracker Jacks, the zipper, Ferris wheels.
Also America’s first serial killer.
Right. We could’ve done without that last thing.
One of my favorite books, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, delves into that World’s Fair and how it profoundly changed the country. The inventions! The murders! The new foods! The murders! Zippers! More murders!
It’s a gripping and wildly informative read, and it’s also a master class in nonfiction that reads like fiction.
What does all this have to do with a sweet treat?
Well, I was recently in Chicago with my high school girlfriends. As we walked around downtown, we passed by a place that sounded familiar from the book: the Palmer House Hotel.
I pulled my friends inside, not just because it’s a grand building …
And not just because it’s infused with historic details, like Mark Twain’s gallon-sized beer stein, and ostentatious lamps …
but because this is a place in food history!
Palmer House is where the brownie was invented.
As the story goes, the dessert was inspired by socialite Bertha Palmer, who was married to Potter Palmer, the millionaire owner of the hotel. She chaired the ladies’ board for the World’s Fair and tasked the hotel pastry chef with creating something that would be easy to box up and transport to the festival grounds.
Voila, the chef dreamed up brownies! (Although they weren’t called that until 1898, when they appeared in a Sears Roebuck catalog.)
The Palmer House confection is not quite to my taste, as I’m more of a crunchy edge brownie person, and this one has a gooey, fudge-like consistency. But hey, we need both kinds of brownie eaters in this world.
If you want to try it yourself, here’s the recipe. More than a century old, it’s the same one they use today.