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Brief History of Chocolate
For centuries, men dominated the history of chocolate, from Montezuma II, the 16th-Century Aztec emperor, who reputedly drank 50 cups a day, to Casanova, who preferred it to Champagne.
Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes first tasted chocolate at Montezuma's court in 1519 -- where only men were allowed to drink it. Cortes not only brought the beans back to Spain, but he started cocoa tree plantations wherever he sailed.
The chocolate that Montezuma served Cortes was unsweetened -- a dark, bitter, cold drink made with pulverized cocoa beans and water and flavored with chilies, cinnamon and cloves. Cornmeal was added to emulsify the cocoa butter.
But when the drink was improved with sugar from the East Indies and vanilla from Mexico, cocoa became an instant Old World hit -- with women as well as men. In 1657 the first of many chocolate houses opened in England.
The invention of the cocoa press in 1828 by C. Van Houten, a Dutch chemist, produced a more refined and easily dissolved cocoa powder. When cocoa beans are ground, the result is chocolate liquor -- a thick brown liquid that contains the essence of chocolate and about 53 percent fat in the form of cocoa butter. Van Houten's machine pressed most of the cocoa butter out, leaving a virtually fat-free solid that could be finely ground into cocoa powder as we know it today.
But it was not until the mid-1800s that the idea of creating a solid sweet "eating" chocolate occurred to cocoa manufacturers. In 1842 French Eating Chocolate appeared on the price list of the English firm of Cadbury and Fry.
Quite simply, cocoa and cocoa butter were recombined, with sugar, to produce the solid chocolate that we enjoy today in so many forms. |