History of Chocolate
By Catalina Alvarez/Jules Hojnowski
If you recall, in the last White Candle newsletter, there was an article about
the History of Tea. At the end of that article I found that there was a
Coffeehouse in London, England that had a 1657 Garway's Coffee House
menu that had as one of its items for sale, Chocolate. I found this to be an
interesting lead for this article, I hope to find something while writing this
for the next piece.
Chocolate! It was originally drank and not eaten! Just the opposite of
the origins of Coffee and Tea! Brown Chocolate is made from cocoa, which is from
a cocoa tea or Theobroma cacao. This tree forms seeds or beans which are
then processed for making chocolate. The white chocolate that we know of is not
made from the bean, but from cacao butter only. Also by using the theory
accredited to Hippocrates of the "humors"; (blood (hot and moist), phlegm (cold and moist),
yellow bile(warm and dry), and black bile(cold and dry)), chocolate is cold and humid.
For thousands of years the Mexican Indian turned cocoa beans into the
"food of the gods", as a drink that was both fermented (octli ) and non-fermented.
The beans or seeds were an very important socially, religiously, medically,
economically ( as currency ), and gastronomically. There are many hieroglyphic
writings that show the various uses of the cacao bean, one of them is of the
Maya Gods shedding blood over the Cacao beans! The Aztecs grew cocoa
for many years before the spred of it went throughout Central America about
250 A.D.. In an archaelogy dig, a pottery jar was found in a Maya tomb that
had a cacao glyph on it. It was taken to the Hershey Company's chemistry
lab, where it was proven that chocolate drink was in the jar and they would
have drank it on a regular basis.
The first Europeans to discover this were the Spanish (Columbus) in the 16th century (1502)!
They took the various flavored drinks (one of them was made with chilli peppers
called "chilli cacao") back to Spain with them. Other flavored chocolate drinks were;
honeyed chocolate, flowered chocolate, green vanilla with chocolate, bright red chocolate,
huitztecolli-flower chocolate, flower-colored chocolate, black chocolate, white chocolate,
and green cacao pods. The Spanish also invented a "grooved wooden beater or swizzle
stick ( Spanish molinillo ) for the production of the much-prized foam." This was in the
late 16th century. Girolamo Benzoni (1518-70), a Milanese historian and voyager, was
one of the first Europeans to write a descrition of the cacao and chocolate drink.
A recipe from 1644 of Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma is:
100 cacao beans
2 chillis ( black pepper may be substituted )
A handful of anise
"ear flower"
2 mecasuchiles [ mecaxochitl ]
(lacking the above two spices, powdered roses of Alexandria may be used)
1 vanilla
2 oz [ 60 g ] cinnamon
12 almonds and as many hazelnuts
1/2 lb [ 450 g ] sugar
Achiote to taste
From Spain, the chocolate drink went to Italy in the late 1500's and on to the
rest of Europe and then to England by the late 1600's. As a side note it
was interesting to see what the Eurpoeans thought chocolates use was.
In the late 1600's, Alphonse de Richelieu, brought chcolate to France
as a medicine for his spleen.
The book used for the article is:
The True History of Chocolate
by S. Coe and M. Coe
copyright date 1996
Next Article: The "Humoral" system by Hippocrates.
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