052 Chocolate

Chocolate

A Brief History

Recently I read about a new diet – the chocolate diet. Eat your favorite chocolate before dinner and you won’t eat as much at dinner! What a way to save calories. Oh, I wish! Maybe I am a chocoholic?

The history of sweets goes back 4000 years or so to ancient Egypt. Their treats, however, were dates and/or honey. Humph! That’s not as satisfying as CHOCOLATE. No, indeed!

Chocolate first came from the Aztec and Mayan cultures from trees growing along the Amazon and Orinoco basins. (Just a random thought here: if we taught the history of chocolate in school, maybe current immigration questions could be resolved.)

Some interesting facts about chocolate’s history are easily found on the internet and in cookbooks. Here is sort of a timeline about how it came about that we Americans now consume one half (yes, ½) of all the chocolate produced annually or roughly three BILLION pounds. Yes, I eat my fair share.

• In records from the about 300 B.C., the Mayans restricted consumption of cocoa beans (xocoatl) to the elite; the beans were ground and made into to a drink.

• The Mayans, about 600 A.D., migrated to northern areas of South America and established cocoa plantations in the Yucatan. Beans continued to be used for an elite drink and also for currency. Records show that a turkey traded for 200 beans and a tomato cost 3 beans.

• Early Mexicans gave the beans even more status as the goddesses of food and water were named as guardians of the cocoa beans.

• In the 1200s, Mayans and Aztecs began trading; the Aztecs added local spices to the beans – chilies, cinnamon, and vanilla were common – and they thickened the liquid with cornmeal; now chocolate could be both a food and a beverage.

• Columbus brought back to King Ferdinand of Spain the beans from his fourth visit to the “new world” in 1502. Columbus failed to get the royals interested. However, Cortez conquered parts of Mexico and King Quetzalcoatl thought Cortez to be a god come to earth in shiny armor. Cortez built his own cocoa plantation to “grow money” for the Spanish when he learned of bean trading.

• In 1585 the first shipments of cocoa beans arrived in Spain. Spanish Princess Maria Theresa was so enamored of the treat, she gave her fiancé Louis XIV of France chocolate for an engagement gift. Suddenly cocoa beans become popular all over Europe.

• Cardinal Richelieu’s brother was a physic or doctor who described the use of chocolate for medicinal purposes, particularly for the spleen and for digestion. (Here’s another factoid: DON’T eat sugar-free chocolate- it is essentially ExLax!) In 1662, Casanova, known as the great lover and womanizer, touted chocolate as “a lubrication to seduction.” (from thenibble.com/reviews)

• In the mid-1700s as the world gets colonized, chocolate goes worldwide. The French took it to India and Madagascar, the Dutch to Ceylon and Java, the Belgians to the Congo, the British to India and the Portuguese back to Brazil.

• 1851 was a banner year for chocolate’s growth. Prince Albert Exposition in London introduced the world to pressed chocolates (pastilles), bonbons, creamed chocolates (truffles). This exhibition medal was known as the “chocolate medal.”

• Soon afterward, American companies grew: Ghirardelli in San Francisco, Nestle, and in 1895 Milton Hershey begins his factory town. 

• Fannie Farmer included a recipe for “brownies” in her 1905 cookbook; the next popular recipe was for Toll House cookies! (Which chocolate chip cookie is best? I still use the one on the back of the chip bag.)

• Now, with fusion cooking the current rage, maybe you can pretend your chocolate is a salad.
  

I know! I know! This is too, too much information! Go enjoy some chocolate! It was a history lesson. And I didn’t name candy bars on purpose. There are just too many of them….

p.s. White chocolate is not chocolate: it is cocoa butter or other vegetable butter substitute, sugar, milk (solids and fats), vanilla, and lecithin to bind it together!!

Glenne (M&M’s are all gone!)