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Chocolate History
Originally consumed as a spicy drink, chocolate can be traced
back to the ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations in Mexico, Central
and South America where the Theobroma cacao tree, or cocoa tree,
grows wild in tropical rain forests.
Solid chocolate as we know it today wasn't created until the late
1800's in Europe. Hundreds of years before the Europeans got into
the act, the Mayans and the Aztecs treasured the cacao beans,
or later to be called cocoa, for both their value as an ingredient
for their special drink and as a currency. Their drink was made
from ground cocoa beans. Since sugar was unknown to the Aztecs,
they flavored the ground beans with spices, chili peppers and
corn meal. Some say it was frothed and eaten with a spoon. The
Aztec emperor, Montezuma, was said to drink chocolate that was
thick as honey and dyed red. He liked it so much that he drank
50 goblets of it every day, and when he was done, he threw the
golden goblets away. They weren't valuable to him, but the chocolate
was.
Christopher Colombus is said to have brought the first cocoa beans
back to Europe between 1502-1504. However, with far more exciting
treasures on board, the beans were neglected. It was his fellow
explorer, the Spain's Hernando Cortez, who realized a potential
commercial value in the beans. Cortez, upon conquering the Aztec
emperor and his people, sampled the drink, but didn't care for
it. However, he did take some beans back to Spain where it was
made into an agreeable drink by substituting sugar and vanilla
for the chili peppers. This beverage was kept a secret from other
European countries for nearly a century. And when the British
captured a Spanish vessel loaded with the cocoa beans in 1587,
the cargo was destroyed as useless.
During the 17th century, the chocolate beverage quickly became
the fashionable drink all over Europe, but not without opposition.
Some condemned it as an evil drink. Frederick III of Prussia prohibited
it in his realm. In the countries that did accept the drink, it
was limited to the wealthy because of its high price. The London
chocolate houses became the trendy meeting places where the elite
London society savored this new luxury beverage. The first chocolate
house opened in London in 1657, advertising "this excellent West
India drink." As cocoa plantations spread to the tropics in both
hemispheres by the 19th century, the increased production lowered
the price of the cocoa beans and chocolate became a popular and
affordable beverage. In England, the heavy import duties which
had made chocolate a luxury for the wealthy were reduced in 1853,
allowing a number of cocoa and drinking chocolate manufacturers
to get into the business.
Chocolate was still exclusively for drinking until around 1830
when solid eating chocolate was developed by J. S. Fry and Sons,
a British chocolate maker. Then in the 1870's, Swiss manufacturers
added milk creating the first milk chocolate.
Industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have
since made chocolate a food for the masses. But despite its availablilty,
people continue to hold onto the notion of chocolate as a special
treat. In the early 1990s, annual U.S. production of chocolate
and related confections exceeded 1.2 million metric tons. Annual
consumption in the U.S. was about 11.3 lb per person.
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| The Cocoa Plant grows only in a narrow band around the center of the Earth, approximately
20 degrees north to 20 degrees south of the equator. The first
cocoa trees-Theobroma cacao-grew wild about 4,000 years ago in
either the Amazon Basin in Brazil, the Orinoco Valley of Venezuela
or somewhere in Central America. |
How Chocolate is Made
The processing of the cacao seeds, better known as cocoa beans,
is complex. The fruit harvest is cured or fermented in a pulpy
state for three to nine days, during which the heat kills the
seeds and turns them brown. The enzymes activated by fermentation
impart the substances that will give the beans their characteristic
chocolate flavor later during roasting.
The beans are then dried in the sun and cleaned in special machines
before they are roasted to bring out the chocolate flavor. They
are then shelled in a crushing machine and ground into chocolate.
During the grinding, the cocoa butter melts, producing a sticky
liquid called chocolate liquor, which is used to make chocolate
candy or is filtered to remove the cocoa butter and then cooled
and ground to produce cocoa powder.
Cocoa
Common name for a powder derived from the fruit seeds of the cacao
tree and for the beverage prepared by mixing the powder with milk.
When cocoa is prepared, most of the cocoa butter is removed in
the manufacturing process. After the fat is separated and the
residue is ground, small percentages of various substances may
be added, such as starch to prevent caking, or potassium bicarbonate
to neutralize the natural acids and astringents and make the cocoa
easy to dissolve in liquids. Cocoa has a high food value, containing
as much as 20 percent protein, 40 percent carbohydrate, and 40
percent fat. It is also mildly stimulating because of the presence
of theobromine, an alkaloid that is closely related to caffeine.
Good News
Recent research suggests that chocolate may have some health benefits.
For example, scientists at the University of California at Davis
revealed in 1996 that chocolate is rich in antioxidants called
phenolics, the same compounds in red wine that seem to offer protection
against heart disease. The researchers calculated that a 1.5-ounce
chocolate bar contains 205 mg of phenolics, comparable to the
210 mg found in a 5-ounce glass of cabernet. Even a cup of hot
chocolate made from 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder delivers 146
mg of phenolics.
And cocoa butter, the fat in chocolate, does not appear to be
so bad for your heart and arteries. Its principal saturated fat,
stearic acid, is converted by the body into oleic acid, a heart
healthy monounsaturated fat also found in olive oil. A 1994 study
at Pennsylvania State University found that volunteers put on
a diet high in milk chocolate (which also contains a small amount
of milk fat) did not experience a rise in blood cholesterol levels.
In contrast, volunteers who consumed a similar amount of saturated
fat from butter had a significant increase in cholesterol levels.
Scientists are also testing out why eating chocolate makes us
feel good. In 1996, researchers at the Neurosciences Institute
in San Diego announced that a compound in chocolate called anandamide
activates the same receptor in the brain as marijuana. While you
would have to eat a Herculean quantity of chocolate (25 pounds,
by one account) to get high, the substance may promote a sense
of well-being. The researchers also found two other substances
in chocolate that interfere with the brain's ability to break
down anandamide, making the effect longer lasting. |
