This recipe comes from the 1912 edition of Lowney’s Cook Book, so far my favorite cookbook in my growing collection of vintage books. I was lucky enough to happen across it at an antique fair near my town. Although the book has been digitized and is available online, there’s something magical about handling an original copy.
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“‘Now what can I serve that everyone likes?’ you ask yourself when you plan party refreshments. And if you decide on ‘something chocolate,’ you’re sure to be right. For chocolate is America’s favorite flavor.” – My Party Book of Tested Chocolate Recipes, 1938.
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In my last post, I made Fannie Merritt Farmer’s molasses brownies, the earliest incarnation of brownies. Chocolate brownies came on the scene just a few years later in the early 1900s, although historians don’t agree on which exact recipe was the first. This 1904 recipe for Bangor Brownies is certainly one of the earliest brownie recipes to include chocolate.
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Fanchonettes are a type of French tart, traditionally topped with meringue. This recipe comes from Charles Elmé Francatelli, who most likely learned how to make them when he was training under Antonin Carême, a famous French chef at the time. The 1836 English translation of Carême’s books, French Cookery, contains a similar recipe for fanchonettes, which can be flavored with vanilla, almonds, coffee, currants, pistachios, hazelnuts, or apricots. I chose to make Francatelli’s version, however, because his fanchonettes are made with chocolate – my favorite.
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Fannie Merritt Farmer’s The Boston Cooking School Cook-Book was an instant best seller when it was first published in 1896, and remains in print to this day. Called “The Mother of Level Measurements,” Farmer was known for her insistence on accurate measurements, unusual in a time when many recipes used vague quantities such as a “heaping spoonful” or a “handful.”
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History in the Making 