Chocolate, a bittersweet tale
Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate …you love ‘em all, and you just can’t wait for Valentine’s Day and all of the chocolate goodies that come with it. Just the thought of a big box of scrumptious chocolates makes your mouth water. Imagine what Hernando Cortez thought thousands of years ago when he first encountered the source of chocolate, the cacao bean, in the New World.
Although Christopher Columbus first stumbled upon the cacao bean in the New World and brought back some with him to Spain, it was explorer Hernando Cortez who uncovered its commercial possibilities.
For years, the Mayans had been growing cacao beans and grounding them to make an unsweetened chocolate drink for members of the royal court and the upper class. In the 14th century, the Aztecs discovered the drink and named it “xocalatl,” warm or bitter liquid. King Montezuma was very fond of the drink and reportedly drank 50 or more a day. Montezuma served the drink to Cortez and his companions in 1519, but they found it to be bitter.
To improve the taste, the Spaniards added cane sugar to the concoction.
Cortez brought the drink back to Spain in 1528 where it underwent further changes. Newly discovered spices, like vanilla and cinnamon, were added to it and it was heated.
Expensive, the drink was popular only among the upper class. The Spaniards savored the lucrative beverage and kept cacao beans a secret, growing them in their overseas colonies and processing the beans in their monasteries for the next 100 years.
• During the 1600s, Spain declined in power, which led to the secret of the cacao bean being revealed. The Spanish crown’s monopoly on the chocolate trade ended and the drink became the rage throughout Europe.
• In 1657, the first of many English Chocolate Houses opened in London and began selling the drink for 10 to 15 shillings, a price that only the upper class could afford. In time, though, manufacturing cacao beans by hand gave way to mass production and the price of cacao beans dropped. By 1730, cacao beans cost less than $3 a pound, making them more affordable for the masses.
• In 1765, Irish chocolate-maker John Hanan took advantage of the lower price and imported cacao beans from the West Indies to Dorchester, Mass. With the help of Dr. James Baker, Hanan refined the cacao beans and built America’s first chocolate mill. By 1780, the mill had begun producing the now-famous Baker’s chocolate.
• Chocolate production was revolutionized in 1795 with the introduction of steam. British apothecary Joseph Fry used a steam engine to grind cacao beans, making manufacturing chocolate on a large factory scale possible.
• Three decades later, Dutch chemist Conrad Van Houten revolutionized production again with the invention of the cocoa press. The cocoa press squeezed out some of the cocoa butter from chocolate, giving it a smoother consistency and improving its overall quality. The process was called “Dutching.”
• During the 1800s and early 1900s, several new developments within chocolate production took place.
• In 1847, Joseph Fry & Son mixed some of the cocoa butter back into the Dutched chocolate and added sugar, creating a paste that could be molded. The result was the first chocolate bar.
• In 1876, Swiss candy maker Daniel Peter created milk chocolate by adding condensed milk to chocolate liquor, the by-product of the cacao bean’s inner meat.
• In 1879, Swiss candy maker Rodolphe Lindt produced a smoother, creamier chocolate through a process known as conching, a means of heating and rolling chocolate for three days and adding cocoa butter to it to create a fondant.
• In 1913, Swiss candy maker Jules Sechaud took the production of chocolate one step further by creating a machine process for making filled chocolates.
Today chocolate production is big business. Americans alone consume more than two billion pounds and spend more than $7 billion on chocolate each year.
Cortez would be amazed at how lucrative chocolate production has become.