Brownies do not have a single, universally agreed-upon inventor, but most food historians link their creation to Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer and the Palmer House Hotel around 1893, while also noting a competing “Bangor, Maine housewife” origin story.

Quick Scoop

The main origin story

Most modern accounts say:

  • In 1893, Bertha Palmer asked the pastry chef at Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel to create a dessert that was smaller than cake but more elegant than a cookie, to serve in boxed lunches at the World’s Columbian Exposition.
  • The result was a rich, dense chocolate bar with walnuts and an apricot glaze, now widely described as the first “Palmer House brownie,” and a version of it is still served there today.

The Bangor, Maine story

There is a second, popular tale that shifts the invention away from Chicago.

  • A frequently repeated legend says a housewife in Bangor, Maine, accidentally left baking powder out of a chocolate cake, creating a dense, fudgy bar later known as “Bangor Brownies.”
  • Early 20th‑century cookbooks and a “Bangor Brownies” recipe in the Boston Globe helped spread this version, though it is often treated as less firmly documented than the Palmer House account.

What historians generally say

When people ask “who invented brownies,” the answer is usually framed as “most likely Chicago, but not 100% proved.”

  • Many writers and culinary historians now treat the Palmer House brownie, commissioned by Bertha Palmer in 1893, as the most credible earliest named version of the dessert.
  • At the same time, articles about brownie history almost always mention both the Palmer House and Bangor stories and emphasize that the exact, single “inventor” is ultimately impossible to pin down with complete certainty.

TL;DR: No single person can be definitively crowned, but Bertha Palmer and the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago (1893) are most often credited, with a rival legend giving the honor to an anonymous Bangor, Maine baker.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.