If you don’t think the name Bertha rings with glamor, then you don’t know philanthropist, pillar of Chicago, and patron-ess of the brownie, Bertha Palmer.
Here’s the skinny. It’s 1893, the year of the Chicago World’s Fair. Bertha is wife to Potter Palmer, a wealthy real-estate fella. He built her Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel as a wedding present.
Bertha wants to attend the Fair with her lady friends and plans it all out—box lunches with a dainty dessert. Not cake—don’t be absurd—Bertha won’t let her fancy friends to cram their mouths with cake. No, she needs something that doesn’t yet exist. Bertha Palmer dreams big.
She goes straight to the Pastry Chef in the Palmer House Hotel and gives him orders. Make a portable dessert, dainty, like cake—but not cake, make it fit in a boxed lunch, and make it delicious.
He returns with a BROWNIE! The world’s first. It’s fudgy, has walnuts on top, an apricot glaze, and it’s yummy. Success! The Palmer House Hotel, still in operation, sells this dessert today (nearly four tons of it in 2017).
If not for Bertha Palmer’s excellent taste and clear direction, we might be suffering through a brownie-free world.
Good work, Bertha!
Total hero.