The Fruit Explorer Ponders Chocolate, Part 3 of 4

[Continued from Part 2]

History of Chocolate

Here is a highly condensed history of chocolate.

• Lost in the mists of prehistory, the cacao tree evolved in the western part of the Amazon basin [Young, pp. 2, 15], most likely on the eastern slopes of the Andes [Coe and Coe, p. 25]. It is not known when it evolved, but it was long enough ago so that it has had time to spread and greatly broaden its range and also to evolve a number of varieties. (Chocolate fanciers make a big deal of these varieties much as wine connoisseurs go into raptures over different varieties of grapes.) 
• Studies indicate that the cacao tree was first domesticated around what is now Iquitos, Peru, for the pulp rather than the seeds; at this time humans had no more use for the seeds than the monkeys. The time of this domestication is unknown, but it was more than 4000 years ago. Juice, both fresh and fermented, was made from the pulp [Presilla, p. 12].
• The desirable pulp led humans to take the cacao tree to Central America and Mexico [Coe and Coe, p. 37, Young, p. 17].
• The standard view is that as early as 1900 B.C.  [Presilla, p. 10] or at least 1800 B.C. [Coe and Coe, p. 37]. villagers living in what is now southeastern Mexico near the Guatemalan border discovered how to process the unpromising cacao beans into chocolate [Coe and Coe, p. 37, Young, pp. 15-16]; it is conjectured that this discovery was made during the process of making an alcoholic beverage from the pulp of the cacao fruit. These early adopters probably ate chocolate in a variety of drinks, gruels, and porridges. We would not recognize these as chocolate dishes since they were bitter and tasted nothing like our foods. This calls to mind the thought in the e-mail on yuzu (10 Apr 2015) that humans have been highly resourceful in finding the good in products that seemingly had no good to offer. In cacao we have proof that humans are smarter than monkeys.  (We know that these peoples drank chocolate since their drinking vessels recovered by archeologists have a residue of both theobromine and caffeine, which is the signature of chocolate [Coe and Coe, p. 36.])
• Chocolate was consumed by the ancient Olmecs, which  flourished from roughly 1500-400 B.C. [Coe and Coe, pp. 34-37]. (The Olmecs were the ones who produced the colossal heads.)
• The classic Mayans, AD 250-900, had elevated chocolate to the point where they had a cacao god; see the picture below, in which you can see cacao seed pods sprouting from his body. The Mayan word for cacao was kakawa [Buford, p. 72, Presilla, 11-12]; the Mayan glyph for kakawa is shown below. The Mayans created the first cacao plantations. As Presilla [p. 11] states, "It was the Maya who brought chocolate making to a high art. Building on the foundation left behind by other cultures of Mesoamerica, they expanded on it and developed a body of skills and knowledge that they would transmit to other people, including the Aztecs." A frothed topping characterized the more prestigious chocolate drinks [Presilla, p. 13]; see the picture below of a Mayan lord warning someone not to touch his frothing chocolate [Presilla, p. 13]. (That is a platter of tamales covered with sauce in front of the lord.) The Mayas would drink chocolate at weddings; therefore, in their culture chocolate was the symbol of an important celebration as champagne is in ours [Coe and Coe, p. 61].

   

   

• The elite of the Anasazi, who lived in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico circa  860-1128 A.D., drank chocolate. They obtained the cacao beans by trading turquoise to the Toltecs, who ruled in Mexico in the interval between the Mayans and the Aztecs [Coe and Coe, p. 55]. Somewhat later the Hohokam in southern Arizona also drank chocolate [Coe and Coe, p. 56].
• Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the Aztec elite drank a complicated drink called cacahuatl that was made of cacao beans and a changing mix of other ingredients including vanilla, chilies, black pepper, flowers, and various obscure items [Coe and Coe, pp. 86-94]; for a recipe, see Coe and Coe [p. 84] or Presilla [pp. 19-20]. This sacred drink was whipped into a froth (see picture below--the one holding the chocolate looks like Bart Simpson), which was considered the most desirable part of the drink [Coe and Coe, p. 48]. (Chocolate frothers can still be found in rural markets in modern Mexico [Coe and Coe, p. 157].) This drink was reserved for the emperor, nobility, warriors, and long-distance merchants [Coe and Coe, p. 95]. One of the optional ingredients was the red bean of the achiote plant, which caused cacahuatl to turn red and take on the symbolic meaning of the blood of a sacrificial victim [Young, p. 19, Presilla, p. 13]; the mouth and lips of the drinker would turn red as if he had been drinking blood [Coe and Coe, p. 112]. (Remember, these are the Aztecs we're talking about.) Commoners were not allowed to drink cacahuatl on pain of death [Presilla, p. 19], with the exceptions being soldiers on the march and the court dwarfs, hunchbacks, and entertainers to whom the emperor would give his leftovers [Diaz, pp. 226-27]. Commoners were allowed to drink less elaborate chocolate drinks that were filled out with maize and other cheap ingredients [Coe and Coe, p. 85]. The Aztecs used cacao beans as a currency or a unit of account for barter; there were prices in cacao beans for everything from turkeys to sex [Presilla, p. 18]. For example, the rate of exchange was one fully ripe avocado for one cacao bean [price list in Coe and Coe, pp. 99-100]. Since the Aztecs lived to the north of the range of cacao trees, they had to obtain cacao beans by trade, tribute, or war. In fact, to the Aztecs, cacao provided an incentive for conquest [Presilla, p. 17]. Counterfeiting of cacao beans was a constant problem [Coe and Coe, p. 100]; it turns out that nothing really changes even when money does grow on trees.

   

• The Spanish came in 1519 and quickly focused on chocolate as a stimulant. One of the conquistadors wrote [quoted in Coe and Coe, p. 84], "This drink is the healthiest thing, and the greatest sustenance of anything you could drink in the world, because he who drinks a cup of this liquid, no matter how far he walks, can go a whole day without eating anything else." The Spanish also picked up on its being an aphrodisiac when they noted that the emperor always took it before visiting his wives [Diaz, p. 226].  In addition, from the beginning the Spanish saw chocolate as a medicine [Coe and Coe, pp. 120-24, 126].
• In 1544 the first chocolate drink was quaffed in Europe by, according to legend, Prince Philip (the future Philip II) when the conquistadors took to Spain some cacao beans and also some Mayans who knew how to make them into a drink [Coe and Coe, p. 130-31, Presilla, p. 24]. Chocolate, however, made less of a sensation than the other import from the New World, the bouncing rubber ball.
• It was in Spain that sugar, which was first exported to Europe from the Levant in the twelfth century and was still a food for the rich, was first mixed with chocolate. There was no sugar in pre-Columbian Mexico [Presilla, p. 26].
• In 1585 the first commercial shipments of cacao beans were made from the New World to Seville in Spain [Coe and Coe, p. 131]. Chocolate became the first non-alcoholic stimulant drink in Europe; coffee arrived in 1615 and tea much later [Young, p. 36].  The stimulating effect of chocolate was seen as providing a military advantage, so the Spaniards tried to keep their drink a secret. For a lengthy description of how the Spaniards prepared chocolate, see Coe and Coe [pp. 131-32]; this is essentially how chocolate was prepared throughout Europe until Van Houten's discovery of 1828 (see below) [Coe and Coe, p. 220]. Each country, however, had its variations; for example, Italians liked to add some peel of citron (14 Mar 2015). For the recipe of the Grand Duke of Tuscany's jasmine chocolate, see Coe and Coe [p. 146]; it includes vanilla, cinnamon, and ambergris.
• In the 16th century, Venezuela became a major producer of cacao. Since the Indians had all died, slaves were imported to cultivate the plantations. The Spanish monopoly on cacao export was challenged by its rivals England, Holland, Denmark, France, and Portugal. These countries established a clandestine but substantial three-way trade with Venezuela, which is described by Coe and Coe [p. 186].

...the slaving ships of a particular nation would carry manufactured goods like clothing, weapons, and metal tools to African slave depots; there, they would be used to barter for the human cargo, which was transported in pestilential holds to the sugar, cacao, indigo, and tobacco plantations of the New World colonies; the produce of those plantations would then be brought back and sold in the mother country.

As a by-product of this trade, the Dutch seized islands off the coast of Venezuela, e.g., Curacao in 1634, which had been neglected since it had no gold. Curacao became a center of commerce, shipping, and piracy.

• In 1657 the first chocolate shop opened in London [Buford, p. 72]. As the picture below shows, these chocolate shops were patronized by the wealthy.

• For the first couple of hundred years after appearing in Europe, chocolate was considered to be a medication, and it became a recreational drug of the elite [Coe and Coe, p. 126].
• In the 18th century, the French used slave labor to cultivate cacao on two Caribbean islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe, which met France's demands for cacao [Coe and Coe, p. 195].
• Chocolate proved to be a boon for assassins of the high ranking since it effectively masked the taste of poison [Coe and Coe, p. 137]. In 1774 it was alleged that the Jesuits murdered Pope Clement XIV by poisoning his chocolate [Coe and Coe, p. 211].
• In 1779 the United States saw the establishment of its first chocolate factory, Baker's Chocolate Company of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Baker's is still a widely recognized brand of chocolate [Young, p. 38, Coe and Coe, p. 227]; it is now a subsidiary of Kraft Foods.
  
  
  
  
• Thomas Jefferson expressed the hope that, "...the superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, would soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain" [Young, p. 38].
• In 1828 a Dutch chemist, Van Houten ushered in the modern era of chocolate making with two advances. First, he figured out a way to press cocoa liquor to separate it into cocoa butter and cocoa solids, the latter of which could be ground to a powder. Second, he found a way to make this powder mix well with water by treating it with alkaline salts; this is called the Dutch process or "dutching" [Coe and Coe, pp. 234-35] These two steps, which revolutionized chocolate as a beverage by creating our modern cocoa powder, at long last marked the departure from the Mayan methods of processing cacao.

   

• In 1847 the first chocolate bars were made by Fry and Sons in England. They found that with proper treatment a mixture of cocoa powder, sugar, and cocoa butter could be molded into a bar. It was coarse and bitter by today's standards but this marked another revolution since it produced the first solid chocolate that was a true eating chocolate. These bars were expensive and, therefore, limited to the elite. Since, however, considerable cocoa butter was needed to make them, cocoa powder was now in excess and became cheap, and this brought the price of cocoa powder within within the reach of the masses [Coe and Coe, p. 241]. Brought to an end was the era, which had lasted for 28 centuries, in which chocolate was a drink of the elite [Coe and Coe, p. 232].  (Recall that cocoa liquor when pressed produces cocoa butter and cocoa cake, and the latter is ground to produce cocoa powder. Therefore, if considerable cocoa butter is needed, this results in an excess of cocoa cake and, therefore, cocoa powder.)

      

• In 1867, Henri Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland, solved the longstanding problem of how to produce condensed milk. In 1875 his neighbor Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate when he discovered how to mix Nestlé's condensed milk with cocoa liquor. Prior to this discovery, mixing milk and cocoa liquor had not succeeded because the fat from the cocoa liquor gathered in a layer on top [Presilla, p. 26]. Peter's process was yet another revolution because it opened up to everyone the possibility of eating solid chocolate since diluting chocolate with milk greatly reduced the cost of chocolate products.
• In 1879, Rudolphe Lindt of Switzerland invented the first conching machine. Combining Peter's process with Lindt's conching machine gave Swiss chocolate the smoothness that made it the international favorite for the rest of the century.
• In 1897 Cadbury produced its first milk chocolate bar . With its "Absolutely pure" advertising campaign, Cadbury eclipsed Fry and Sons [Coe and Coe, p. 245]. Cadbury also introduced the first Valentines Day candy box [Coe and Coe, p. 242]. In 2010 Cadbury was, like Baker's Chocolate, taken over by Kraft Foods, but in 2012 it was spun off with about a hundred brands of snack food as Mondelez International.

      

• By 1901 Peter's Chocolate had a United States distributor and minimal competition since the process had been kept secret and since Americans were struggling to solve the problem of how to combine milk and chocolate. 
• Milton Hershey developed another process for making milk chocolate, and the first Hershey bar (pictured below) appeared in 1900. The Peter method and the Hershey method were different; this difference has persisted, and this explains why European and American milk chocolate taste different today [Buford, p. 74]. Hershey's other innovation was to create Hershey,Pennsylvania, a company town over which he was the benevolent dictator [Coe and Coe, pp. 250-51]. In addition, after a trip to Cuba in 1915, he created a company town 60 miles east of Havana to produce the sugar that he needed; this town was seized by the authorities following Castro's revolution in 1959 [Coe and Coe, p. 251].

   

• In 1905, cacao trees were first planted in the Ivory Coast [Coe and Coe, p. 197]. Now, Africa produces most of the world's cacao, and the Ivory Coast is by far the world's largest producer. Since only a few cuttings were used to establish the plantations in Africa, this production rests on a very narrow genetic base.
• At the beginning of the twentieth century, the world entered the modern phase of chocolate, which sped along until 1989, when the cacao world was hit by an epidemic of witch's broom, a disease that rots the seed pods and causes branches to grow into a broom-like cluster and die (see pictures); multitudes of cacao trees perished. There is no cure. Chocolate production plummeted, especially in Brazil. Eventually, a variety of cacao tree in Peru was found that did not suffer from witch's broom, and rootstocks were developed that were resistant to witch's broom [Presilla, pp. 87, 90]. Production rebounded worldwide but not in Brazil.

   

   

[Continued in Part 4]