The History of Chocolate
Early History of Chocolate
The earliest record of chocolate was over fifteen hundred years ago in the Central American rain forests, where the tropical mix of high rain fall combined with high year round temperatures and humidity provide the ideal climate for cultivation of the Cacao Tree.
The Cacao Tree was worshipped by the Mayan civilisation of Central America and Southern Mexico, who believed it to be of divine origin, Cacao is actually a Mayan word meaning "God Food" hence the tree's modern generic Latin name 'Theobrama Cacao' meaning ‘Food of the Gods’.
Cacao was corrupted into the more familiar 'Cocoa' by the early European explorers. The Maya brewed a spicy, bitter sweet drink by roasting and pounding the seeds of the tree Cocoa Beans with maize and Capsicum (Chilli) peppers and letting the mixture ferment. This drink was reserved for use in ceremonies as well as for drinking by the wealthy and religious elite.
The Aztecs of central Mexico also prized the beans, but because the Aztec's lived further north in more arid regions at higher altitudes, where the climate was not suitable for cultivation of the tree, they had to acquire the beans through trade and/or the spoils of war. The Aztecs prized the beans so highly they used them as currency - 100 beans bought a Turkey or a slave - and Taxes were paid in cocoa beans to Aztec emperors.
The Aztecs, like the Mayans, also enjoyed Cacao as a beverage fermented from the raw beans, which again featured prominently in ritual and as a luxury available only to the very wealthy. The Aztecs called this drink Xocolatl and the Spanish conquistadors found this almost impossible to pronounce and so corrupted it to the easier 'Chocolat', the English further changed this to Chocolate.
The Aztec's regarded chocolate as an aphrodisiac and their Emperor Montezuma reputedly drank it fifty times a day from a golden goblet and is quoted as saying of Xocolatl: "The divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food"
The Aztec's actually prized Xocolatl well above Gold and Silver. When Montezuma was defeated by the Spaniard Cortez in 1519, the victorious conquistadors searched his palace for the Aztec treasury expecting to find Gold & Silver. All they found were huge quantities of cocoa beans.
Chocolate in Europe
Xocolatl or Chocolat or Chocolate as it became known, was then brought to Europe by Cortez. By this time the conquistadors had learned to make the drink more palatable to European tastes by mixing the ground roasted beans with sugar and vanilla (a practice still continued today), thus offsetting the spicy bitterness of the brew the Aztec's drank.
The first chocolate factories opened in Spain, where the dried fermented beans brought back from the new world by the Spanish treasure fleets were roasted and ground, and by the early 17th century chocolate powder - from which the European version of the drink was made - was being exported to other parts of Europe. The Spanish kept the source of the drink, the cocoa bean, a secret for many years so successfully that when English buccaneers boarded what they thought was a Spanish 'Treasure Galleon' in 1579, they found only what appeared to be 'dried sheep's droppings'. In frustration, they burned the whole ship to the waterline. At the time, chocolate was so expensive that it was literally worth its weight in Silver (if not Gold). Chocolate was Treasure Indeed!
For almost a century this popular drink was a closely guarded secret of the Spaniards. It was only due to the intermarriages of royal families throughout Europe that its popularity spread to the Spanish Netherlands, Italy, France, and Germany In finally in about 1520 it made its way to England. However during this time it still remained an expensive luxury to the very elite.
The first Chocolate House in England opened in London in 1657 followed rapidly by many others. Like the already well established coffee houses, they were used as clubs where the wealthy and business community met to smoke a clay pipe of tobacco, conduct business and socialise over a cup of chocolate.
Chocolate as we know it
The first mention of chocolate being eaten in solid form is when bakers in England began adding cocoa powder to cakes in the mid 1600's, however it was not until 1828 when a Dutch chemist Johannes Van Houten, invented a method of extracting the bitter tasting fat or "cocoa butter" from the roasted ground beans. His aim was to make the drink smoother and more palatable. Quite by accident, he unknowingly paved the way for solid chocolate as we know it.
Some twenty years later Fry and Sons of Bristol in England, Fry & Sons of Bristol, England mixed Sugar with Cocoa Powder and Cocoa Butter (made by the Van Houten process) to produce the first solid chocolate bar.
In 1875 a Swiss manufacturer, Daniel Peters, found a way to combine cocoa paste with milk after the advent of condensed milk by another Swiss, Henri Nestle. The result was Milk Chocolate which has now become the most popular chocolate in the world.
Yet another Swiss, Rodolfe Lindt invented the conching machine in 1879 where the re addition of cocoa butter to the cocoa mass, followed by a prolonged kneading process produced a glossy, velvety smoothness to the chocolate.
Throughout the 19th Century, Chocolate gradually became available to more and more people through the industrialisation of its manufacturing process. In 1912, the Belgian Jean Neuhaus invented the bite size chocolate “praline” filled with various soft centres, and a few years later he patented a cardboard container for the packaging of loose chocolates called a Ballotin. This enable chocolates to be sold and packaged without fear of being crushed as had been the case with paper cornets of the time.
Mass production and better means of packaging ensured chocolates were now being enjoyed by many people, from all walks of life across most continents of the globe.