[Continued from Part 3]
Miscellany
While cacao trees in nature propagate by seeds, this is inconvenient in a cacao plantation since this causes genetic diversity, which makes it difficult to judge when a seed pod is ripe. Therefore, commercial plantations usually use our old friend grafting (see the e-mails of 1 Feb 2015 and 27 Mar 2015) to propagate trees [Young, 70, 71, 74-74, 114]. Strange to say, trees planted from seed tend to grow upward, while those that are grafted tend to grow outward, which is an advantage since this makes the pods easier to harvest. A disadvantage is that widespread use of grafting diminishes genetic diversity, which in turn makes the trees more susceptible to a new disease (see the e-mail of 27 Mar 2015), such as witch's broom [Presilla, pp. 49, 52].
The cacao tree is in the Malvaceae family, commonly known as the mallow family. The common mallow, which grows on my street, is in this family, as is the durian (9 May 2015), hollyhock, and marsh mallow, the root of which supplies the juice that is the key ingredient of the confection (or used to be, before artificial ingredients were introduced to such an extent that true marsh mallow candy is now unknown) [Fernald and Kinsey, p. 275].
Why does chocolate taste so good? Recall from the e-mail on citrus miscellany of 27 Mar 2015 that plants produce many chemicals to deter insects and other herbivores. It turns out that the cacao seed pod is one of the best defended objects in tropical botany. It contains not only theobromine and caffeine but about 500 other chemicals that are mainly defensive in purpose [Buford, p. 76, Young, p. 13]. This unique mix of chemicals gives chocolate its complex flavor that happens to hit the spot with humans. We should add chocolate to the lengthy list of debts (flowers, spices) that we owe to herbivores, which we should probably worship. By the way, synthetic chocolate does not exist because of the difficulty of reproducing the 500 compounds that make up chocolate. There seems to be little danger that chocolate will go the way of the marsh mallow.
The implicit goal of any organism is to spread its genes far and wide in space and time. In pursuit of this goal, the cacao tree has, as just mentioned, put a great deal of effort into manufacturing chemicals to make its seeds inedible. It is the great irony of chocolate that these very chemicals have made the seeds supremely edible from the human point of view, and this edibility, in a second great irony, has in turn resulted in the cacao tree being highly successful as it now grows in great numbers in South America, Mesoamerica, Africa, and Asia.
You will sometimes see a number on a bar of chocolate; this refers to the percentage of the bar's weight that is composed of cacao. For example, the picture below of a dark chocolate bar I got at Trader Joe's says that this bar is 72 percent cacao. Dark chocolate has become fashionable, and chocolate snobs insist on a figure of 70 percent or higher [Buford, p. 70]. To connoisseurs, all that matters is the chocolate; a cream-filled bon bon is beneath their notice. Also shown is the back of the bar. You might be able to make out that the ingredients--Cocoa mass (synonym for cocoa liquor), sugar, cocoa powder, soy lecithin--are pretty much the minimum needed for an edible bar, so this is a pure bar with no monkey business thrown in. Trader Joe's 1.65 ounce bars are a bargain at three for $1.79. I tried one and found it to be definitely stronger than a Hershey bar; this bar gives a hint of the strong, bitter taste of a cacao bean not civilized by sugar. (I resist the temptation to comment on this bar's bouquet.) Other than cacao, in dark chocolate the only other significant ingredient is sugar, so this bar is close to 28 percent sugar.) One bar contains a staggering 12 grams of saturated fat, which is the bad fat; that's 57 percent of the recommended daily intake of saturated fat. One source, however, hopefully claims that this fat "...largely consists of stearic triglycerides, which have been shown to have no effect on blood cholesterol levels; there is no direct link between chocolate consumption and the development of heart disease" [Coe and Coe, pp. 30-31].
There are Federal standards for cacao content of various types of chocolate as well as unofficial standards established by connoisseurs..
- The FDA requires in 21CFR163.130(a)(2) that the cocoa liquor content of milk chocolate must be at least 10 percent by weight. AHershey Bar has 11 percent. An unofficial standard for premium milk chocolate is 41 percent [Presilla, p. 141].
- The FDA requires in 21CFR163..123.(a)(3) that the cocoa liquor content of bittersweet chocolate must be at least 35 percent by weight. An unofficial standard for premium dark chocolate is 70 percent [Presilla, p. 141, Buford, p. 70].
- The FDA requires in 21CFT163.124(a)(2) that the cocoa fat content of white chocolate be at least 20 percent by weight.
Terminology review: From above, cocoa liquor (synonym: cocoa mass) is what you get when you grind a cacao bean; in effect, this is the entire bean. The cocoa liquor can be pressed to produce two components: cocoa butter (synonym: cocoa fat) and cocoa solids (synonym: cocoa cake). Keep in mind that, as Presilla [p. 141] says,"...cacao content is what makes chocolate taste like chocolate."
While currently we largely think of chocolate in its solid form, for nine-tenths of its history it was solely a beverage [Coe and Coe, p. 12]. It is as if someone were to discover how to turn beer into a solid, and henceforth most beer was eaten rather than drunk.
If you want to pass as a chocolate connoisseur, buff up your vocabulary. Instead of saying that chocolate coats a truffle, say that chocolate "enrobes" a truffle [Presilla, p. 141, Coe and Coe, p. 257]. To build your sensory vocabulary, associate with wine snobs. Learn to drop the phrase "sensory profile" into your conversation. Finally, as a connoisseur, you should dismiss milk chocolate as candy.
If you have to make a living as a salesman making cold calls, then chocolate is the product to be selling. No one slams the door in your face when you ask, "Would you like to try some chocolate?" [Buford, p. 78]
If you want to put your money where your mouth is, invest in cacao bean futures markets [Presilla, p. 111]. Check out the daily prices on the siteof the International Cocoa Organization. (This is a good site from which to get the industry view of cacao. Note that industry uses "cocoa" rather than "cacao.") Since cacao prices fluctuate, sometimes wildly, you have the opportunity to place bets on cacao and perhaps make or lose a bundle. Line your pockets when a disastrous disease wipes out the crop. You can look here or here to find tutorials on cacao futures trading. Companies like E*Trade are eager to open an account for you. They make it easy for you to take a bath in cocoa liquor.
Everyone is cheering on the scientists who are producing studies that suggest that chocolate has beneficial properties on both mood and health [Young, p. 13-14]. Keep in mind, however, that these studies, which apply to dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate, are suggestive rather than conclusive [Coe and Coe, pp. 30, 31]. It is premature to draw definitive conclusions, except that dark chocolate at least does no harm [Coe and Coe, p. 30]. Do not trick yourself into thinking that chocolate is a health food. Nevertheless, a class of compounds in cacao beans called flavonols is tentatively thought to confer significant health benefits. It's hard to remain detached and skeptical when one reads about a study of how cacao-derived flavonols can improve brain function of those aged 61-85. Unfortunately, just eating chocolate bars will not provide this benefit since the fermenting, roasting, and Van Houten process, which are designed to remove the harsh taste of chocolate, also remove the flavonols. Mars, the candy company, is leading the research on how to retain the flavonols and is seeking to commercialize their findings. Check out theirsite. (The fast-buck artists already scent an opportunity they can exploit. After visiting several pages on the Mars site, it became known to the unseen beings who monitor my browsing that I was interested in flavonols, and an ad, complete with a fake nutrition label, touting a fly-by-night chocolate product that is said to contain flavonols, popped up while I was looking at weather.com. The research is inconclusive, the marketing misleading, the price stratospheric.)
The Dark Side of Chocolate
A current threat to our chocolate is, according to the founder of a boutique chocolate company, that international chocolate companies are pushing on growers a cultivar known as CCN-51 because it is highly productive and very disease resistant; this greatly decreases the cost of production. The problem is that this chocolate doesn't taste very good. It remains to be seen whether this new cultivar will push more traditional cultivars out of production; CCN-51 has already come to dominate Ecuador's commercial plantations [Presilla, p. 140]. The root of the problem is that the threat of disease is so pressing that, as scientists see the problem, they first need to save the cacao tree, and only then will they have the luxury of focusing on flavor [Presilla, p. 56]. More broadly, since cacao is a labor-intensive, disease-prone crop that requires highly skilled labor, many farmers are switching to less demanding crops such as bananas and oranges [Presilla, pp. 64, 70], or perhaps moving to other types of jobs such as tourism, which is a growing industry in many of the localities where cacao is grown. In short, survival of the cacao industry depends on solving the multi-sided problem of developing a disease-resistant and productive cultivar that provides a tasty bean, can the grown economically, and that doesn't require such unpleasant labor that other jobs become more attractive.
Caffeine is present in chocolate. This is why those who are told to avoid caffeine, e.g., to prevent sleeplessness, should stay away not only from coffee but also from chocolate.
Theobromine, which is one of the constituents of chocolate, relaxes the sphincter muscle between the stomach and the esophagus and allows stomach acids to enter the esophagus. This is why sufferers of heartburn are told to stop eating chocolate. Theobromine is named after Theobromus, the genus of the cacao plant, since it was first discovered in cacao beans. Another caution is that theobromine cannot be metabolized by dogs and cats and, therefore, can cause seizures and death, so keep your pets away from chocolate [Coe and Coe, p. 31].
The oxalate in chocolate increases the risk of kidney stones. (I have invited many of you to taste the shamrock-shaped leaf of yellow wood sorrel so you can experience its tartness. That tartness is due to oxalate. In fact, this plant is in the genus Oxalis.)
When you read about deforestation and deplore cutting down the rain forest, keep in mind that a significant amount of this cutting is done to create space to grow cacao. Since cacao trees evolved to thrive in the heavily shaded understory of the Amazon rain forest, it is possible even in a plantation setting to grow cacao trees under the forest canopy and, thus, to preserve many of the ecosystem services of the rain forest (discussed enthusiastically by Young [pp.170-89]). Scientists are trying to popularize this approach over the more traditional open plantation. Popular shade trees that provide a useful product as well as shade when growing cacao are rubber [Young, pp. 63-64] and mamey [Presilla, p. 64]. (Travel tip: Next time you eat at a Cuban restaurant in Miami, be sure to order a mamey milkshake. I usually have two.) It has come to be appreciated, however, that these shade trees are there less to protect the cacao trees and more to encourage the pollinating midges [Coe and Coe, p. 21].
It is expected that climate change will affect cacao trees, as well as everything else. Plant breeders are at work trying to develop the new varieties that will be needed to keep production up as climate changes. Efforts are also continuing to discover and preserve the diversity that currently exists throughout cacao's range. (In the late 1930s F.J. Pound, based in Trinidad, was so intrepid in exploring the far corners of the western Amazon basin and bringing back newly discovered strains of cacao that he is called the "fruit explorer" [Presilla, p. 48, 55, 83). It appears that by 2050 many of the areas where cacao now grows will no longer be climatically suitable. Since it appears that the area around Iquitos, Peru, will remain suitable, this area has been targeted as a suitable place to maintain cacao diversity.
When you look at the map above and see that cacao is grown around the world, you might think that this represents considerable genetic diversity, but in fact the opposite is the case. Outside of the New World, the cacao in a country is often descended from a few cuttings that were imported long ago. This means that the first few plants contributed most of the genetic heritage in the country, and there is very little diversity. In evolutionary biology, this is called the founder effect in which the genes that happen to belong to the early colonists determine the genetic make-up of the later, much larger population. Any quirks in the original genes become standard in this population. Some think that the founder effect explains why red hair is so common in Ireland.
Since most cacao is grown in poor countries with little if any social regulation, the high prices commanded by chocolate invites abuse, and there are reports of worker mistreatment, child labor, and even slavery [Coe and coe, pp. 262-66]. The Internet is full of scathing reports such as hereand here and here. Wikipedia has a brief review. For a lengthy video treatment, go here. The response of industry to the journalistic attacks has been increased secrecy.
Party Tip
Your party tip is to provide your guests with the opportunity to fulfill the childhood fantasy of being a chocolatier. Provide your guests with cocoa liquor, perhaps from here or here, and also with a number of flavorings such as peppermint, cinnamon, nutmeg, blueberry, bacon bits, butterscotch, maple, raspberry, key lime, ambergris, marsh mallow, cloves, citron zest, sherry, pomegranate, strawberry, and wintergreen. Also, perhaps you have gone to the hospital with a hand problem and have ended up with one of the artists who puts a flat plastic sheet into a tub of hot water to soften it and then fashions it into the type of cast you need for your thumb or whatever needs attention. So that you can provide a mold in any shape desired by a guest, hire one of these plastics artists for your party. The last step in the processing of chocolate is to temperthe cocoa liquor, which roughly means to melt it and then properly cool it to the point where it is ready to be made into a final product. Temper your cocoa liquor in a tempering machine so that it is ready for your guests to make the final step. (For your party you can buy a cheap, low-capacity tempering machine such as the one pictured below. If you don't want to spend $2250 for this machine, just use a marble slab as shown in this video starting at about 12:00. For further tips on home tempering, see Presilla, pp. 214-15].) Have a number of cookie cutters on hand; an enterprising guest who wants to go beyond this can specify to the plastics artist what kind of a mold is desired, e.g., a jack fruit mold. The guest obtains his or her allotment of tempered cocoa liquor, adds the desired flavorings, and then pours the concoction into the mold. Each guest can decide whether to make dark or milk chocolate and whether to use his or her allotment of cocoa liquor on one big item on on several small ones. While the chocolate hardens, you can make the time pass quickly by lecturing on the history of chocolate. When the chocolate has cooled, remove the chocolate objects from the molds, take pictures, and then have a taste test. The different flavorings and mixes of flavorings can be evaluated by the chocolate experts present, which is probably everyone. If one of your guests is inspired to make a career out of chocolate, you can show him or her how to apply for a position as a chocolatier and give him or her a copy of The Art of the Chocolatier, by the renowned chocolatier Ewald Notter. According to Amazon, this book covers everything from the fundamentals of chocolate to advanced showpiece design.
If you are unable to secure a plastics artist for your party, an alternative is to provide a 3-D printer so that your guests can create their own chocolate art works.
If you feel that it is inauthentic to start with the cocoa liquor, you can show your guests this video, which shows how to start with cacao beans and make homemade chocolate from scratch. This video is made in the Nicaraguan jungle using an open fire, with a background of dancing kids and crowing roosters. If you prefer a video made in a well-equipped American kitchen, then this video is excellent. Both videos are very instructive. The first shows how simple chocolate making can be. The second might be better for your party since it provides more practical detail, in particular how to conche and temper in your own kitchen. For knowledgeable discussions on all aspects of making chocolate at home, the Alchemist's Notebook, which is devoted to the art and science of homemade chocolate, seems to be the best site.
Rick
References
Buford, Bill, "Extreme Chocolate: The quest for the perfect bean," The New Yorker, 29 Oct 2007, pp.68-79. This is a typical New Yorker article in that it is informative and well written. It is in part a study of chocolate, in part a travelogue, and in part a human interest story about an unbalanced, rogue chocolatier.
Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate, Thames and Hudson, third edition, 2013 (first edition published in 1997). The senior author was an anthropologist and food historian. She planned this book, did the research, and started writing it. After her death the junior author, her husband, a professor emeritus at Yale who specialized in the Maya, finished the book using her notes. This is the standard work on the history of chocolate. This book makes a point of going back to the original sources, and it is to be congratulated for clearing away a lot of incorrect information that has accumulated from one writer uncritically repeating another; its title is patterned after that of the next entry below, which is often rendered as The True History of the Conquest of Mexico. This was the last item I read for this e-mail, and I found that it was the source for most of my other sources, though, in the great Internet tradition, it was not cited
Diaz, Bernal, The Conquest of New Spain, translated by J.M. Cohen, Penguin Classics, 1963 (completed in 1568, first published in 1632). The author, a conquistador who served under Hernan Cortes, wrote this eyewitness account late in life when be became irritated by the inaccurate and overblown accounts of the conquest that were being published by the ignorant, the malicious, and the sycophantic.
Fernald, Merritt Lyndon and Alfred Charles Kinsey, Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America, Gray Herbarium of Harvard University, Special Publication, Idlewild Press, 1943. Of the three books I own and use on edible wild plants, this is my favorite. It is comprehensive, reliable, and entertaining. The senior author was the director of the Gray Herbarium at Harvard, and the junior author is famous for his work on gall wasps and for his books on human sexual behavior. There is a second edition that I am not familiar with. This is the book that I used to discover the problems with red-berried elder and common elder (9 May 2015).
Presilla, Maricel E., The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes, revised edition, Ten Speed Press, 2009 (first edition published in 2001). The author is an anthropologist, culinary historian, chef, restaurateur, author, lecturer, consultant to the chocolate industry, and entrepreneur. Like Pepe, she is from Cuba, where her family still farms cacao. I found this book strong throughout.
Young, Allen M., The Chocolate Tree: A Natural History of Cacao, revised and expanded edition, University Press of Florida, 2007 (first edition published in 1994). This is a reliable and thorough book written by a biologist who has studied cacao for decades. It is especially strong on pollination and on how the cacao tree and its pollinators relate to the ecology of the tropical rain forest. It is weak on history. The cover is pictured above.
