Christopher Colombus was the first European to see the cocoa bean, but it was overlooked in favour of the many other treasures he found in The New World. Later, the explorer Hernando Cortez brought 3 chests of cocoa beans back to Spain. The Spaniards kept chocolate a secret for nearly a century, and they set up cocoa plantations in their foreign colonies.
"With the decline of Spain as a power, the secret of cacao leaked out at last, and the Spanish monopoly of the chocolate trade came to an end. In a few years the knowledge of it had spread through France, Italy, Germany and England."
At first, chocolate was considered a beverage for the rich - no one else could afford to drink it, as it was literally like drinking money.
The name chocolate has come from the Aztec word, xocoatl.
Chocolate was made into a drink by adding water and sugar to the beans, and then heating. It was only used as a drink in this way, even after cocoa powder was invented by a Dutchman, Conrad van Houten, in 1828.
It took another 20 years before J.S. Fry invented a solid form of chocolate that could be eaten. The Swiss invented solid milk chocolate by adding condensed milk.
American chocolate has a slightly smokey taste, as the Latin American cocoa beans they use are dried over smokey fires. English chocolate is made from African cocoa beans, which are sun-dried.
