The History of Chocolate

It’s important to understand the history of chocolate as we explore the magic and mystery of hand dipped chocolates. Thus let’s learn a bit about one of hand dipped chocolates key ingredients—the chocolate. In future articles we’ll invite experienced experts to share important facts about the many characteristics of the various types of dipping chocolate. But to begin this adventure together, let’s step back a millennia or two.

The study of the history of chocolate will bring a giant smile to the face of any serious connoisseur of this ancient currency. (Not to mention the smile when you stuff some into your mouth – liquid or solid.)

The word currency was not a mistake, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The smile comes when you see how archeologists, anthropologists, etymologists, and the other sundry ologists try to put a finger on the origin of the world’s favorite addiction—chocolate.

In the words of Inigo Montoya, “No, there is too much, let me sum up.”

To make it easy, I will use the term “cacao to refer to the plant or its beans before processing. “Chocolate” refers to anything made from the beans and “cocoa” will refer the chocolate in powdered form.

They say chocolate was invented by the folks in Mesoamerica. That’s somewhere between Texas and Chile. More accurately, there is clear evidence from the aforementioned smarty folks that chocolate was an important drink in Central and South America as early as 400 to 500 AD. Others say a millennia or two before that.

Lots of evidence shows the cacao had its beginning in Mesoamerica. The Aztecs, Mayan’s and even the Inca as far south as southern Ecuador, (and likely their predecessors) considered chocolate the drink of the Gods. Yet, there is evidence that the early residents as far north as Central Utah had chocolate nearly 1200 years ago. (That’s before the pioneers)

Some claim it was the Olmec in ancient Mexico and then later the Mayans who poured a mixture of roasted and ground cacao seeds, mixed with chiles, water and maize to make a frothy beverage called xocolati. My bet is that the natives offered the Spanish conquerors a nice hot chocolate that was fermented and the translators couldn’t spell worth a hoot so they wrote it xocolati.

None the less, when the conquistadors showed up, they realized gold wasn’t nearly as valuable to the natives as was cacao beans. Cacao beans were used as currency. One bean could buy you a tamale, and a hen turkey could be purchased for 100 beans.

One Spanish chronicler reported he witnessed that when loading a bundle of the cacao beans, some spilled and the indigenous peoples hurried to pick up each bean.

Well, the cacao bean made it back to Europe where of course the snoots there couldn’t deal with the bitterness so they added sugar and voila, an addiction was born.

Over the decades, production processes became more efficient and thus the cost declined and the rich and famous were no longer the only folk to afford the chocolate craze.

Cacao plantations spread as the English, Dutch and French colonized and planted. Chemists got involved and figured out how to remove some of the bitterness by introducing alkaline salts to chocolate, then they figured out how to remove much of the natural fat, which we know as cocoa butter which made chocolate cheaper to produce and more consistent in quality. The guy was probably Dutch so they call it Dutch Cocoa. That was when chocolate began really taking on a solid form when they figured out how to add the cocoa butter back in. It’s all really sciency and we’ll get into the details of it and why it matters in future articles.

Then in 1875 a guy by the name of Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate by mixing in powdered milk which was developed by a guy named Henri Nestle. A few years later Rodolphe Lindt invented a machine that further improved the process and the quality of the solid chocolate. Do you recognize a few names? Along came John Cadbury and William Hershey in the 1800’s and well, now most of us sensible folk are just willing to use our currency to acquire the brand and flavor we like best and where the Mayan’s and Aztecs, used chocolate for religious purposes, as aphrodisiacs, healing and status, we civilized folk use chocolate religiously to woo our women, seduce our men, heal broken hearts, calm harried nerves, sugar up our grandchildren and mostly feed our addiction.

And if you don’t believe me, wander through a few references you’ll find at www.handdippedchocolates.com.

word chokol meaning hot, and the Nahuatl atl meaning water.

References

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