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Brownies (Cup sugar teaspoon vanilla cup)
1 cup sugar 3/4 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 cup melted butter 1/2 cup flour 1 egg, unbeaten 1/2 cup walnut meats, cut in pieces 2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted Mix ingredients in order given. Line a seven-inch square pan with paraffine paper. Spread mixture evenly in pan and bake in a slow oven. As soon as taken from oven turn from pan, remove paper, and cut cake in strips, using a sharp knife. If these directions are not followed paper will cling to cake, and it will be impossible to cut it in shapely pieces.
A compact, fudgy brownie of the early twentieth-century type: no leavening, no salt, and a very high ratio of sugar to flour. A few of its instructions need translating.
- Oven temperatureA "slow oven" here means about 300-325F. At that heat a seven-inch pan of this batter needs roughly 25-35 minutes; the centre should still be slightly soft when the edges have set.
- Paraffine paperThis is waxed paper, standard pan lining of the period. Parchment paper does the same job and releases more cleanly.
- Cut while hotThe instruction to turn out, peel, and cut immediately is the hinge of the recipe. Waxed paper welds itself to cooling sugar, and a cooled brownie of this density tears rather than slices.
- Squares of chocolateAn unsweetened baking square is one ounce, so this calls for two ounces total. Modern unsweetened bars are usually scored in one-ounce sections; do not substitute bittersweet without cutting the sugar.
- Egg unbeatenThe recipe specifies the egg go in whole and unbeaten, and the instruction to "mix ingredients in order given" suggests minimal working of the batter; beating air into the egg would tend toward a cakier crumb.
- SaltThere is none in the list. A generous pinch with the flour improves it if you use unsalted butter.
- YieldA seven-inch pan gives about sixteen small squares or a dozen strips, cut as the recipe directs.
Brownies are a distinctively American form, and they appear in printed cookbooks only from around the turn of the twentieth century. The earliest printed versions are usually traced to Boston-area cookery writing, though the attribution is not settled and rival origin stories circulate. The name is usually said to describe nothing more than the colour. Early versions like this one are closer to a chocolate confection than a cake: no baking powder, very little flour, and a direction to cut into strips rather than squares.