Brownie: A Chocolate Square, a Household Spirit, and a Young Guide
A brownie is a dense chocolate cake cut into squares. The same word names a helpful house spirit in folklore and the youngest section of the Guides.
Brownie has three unrelated homes: the kitchen, folklore and the scout hut. The cake is American and about a century old; the spirit is Scottish and much older; the Guides took their name from the spirit, not the cake.
- A dense chocolate square. *A tray of brownies.*
- A helpful household spirit (folklore). *The brownie did the chores at night.*
- A junior Girl Guide or Girl Scout. *She joined the Brownies at seven.*
- Credit for good behaviour, in brownie points. *Earning brownie points with the boss.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | brownie | A walnut brownie. |
| Plural | brownies | A batch of brownies. |
| Proper noun | Brownies | She is in the Brownies. |
| Compound | brownie points | No brownie points for that. |
| Related | blondie | A blondie has no cocoa. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The brownies were still warm from the oven.The food sense, lowercase.
- He scored brownie points by staying late.Informal credit, often said with mild scorn.
- In Scottish folklore a brownie worked for a bowl of cream.The original sense, from its brown clothing.
How the cake got its name
- First printed recipes appear in American cookbooks around 1900
- The name simply describes the colour, as blondie later did for the cocoa-free version
- A brownie is denser than cake and softer than a biscuit, because it uses little or no raising agent
- Fudgy and cakey are the two styles bakers argue about
The folkloric brownie is recorded in Scots from the sixteenth century, a small brown-clad spirit who did household work while the family slept — but who left forever if offered payment or clothing.
Where do brownie points come from?
Probably from the junior Guides earning credits for good deeds, though the phrase may also owe something to older merit schemes.
What is a blondie?
The same dense bar made with brown sugar and vanilla instead of cocoa, so it bakes pale rather than brown.