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origins of chocolate, which is derived from the Theobroma cacao tree, stretch back at least 4000 years.The plant is
believed to have originated in the Amazon or Orinoco basins in South America and was
regarded by the Aztecs as being of divine origin ('Theobroma' means 'food of the gods').
They used the tree's beans as currency - 100 beans would buy a slave, 12 beans the
services of a courtesan and 10 beans a rabbit. |
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Aztec god of war |
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| Christopher Columbus |
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Although
Christopher Columbus was the first European to carry beans back to Europe (around 1502)
they were as curiosities but it is his fellow countryman, the conquistador Herman Cortes,
who is credited with introducing them to the Western World a little over 40 years later. |
| Hernan
Cortes recognising its potential he took a load of cocoa beans back to Spain. These
were used to seed plantations in Trinidad, Haiti and the West African island of Fernando
Po and gave Spain a virtual monopoly of the cocoa market for almost a century. |
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Hernan Cortes |
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| Chocolate drinks were developed in Spain that were seasoned with pepper, vanilla,
sugar and cinnamon or mixed with beer or wine. They became such a hit that Spanish society
ladies had them served during Mass. When the French latched on to it, they immediately
hailed it as a wondrous aphrodisiac and, by slapping heavy taxes on it, further enhanced
its status as a drink for the rich and decadent. In 17th and 18th century England, the
drink became so popular that chocolate houses threatened the existence of the traditional
English pub. The first commercial chocolate factory in the UK (J.S. Fry) began in Bristol
in 1728. The first primitive version of the chocolate bar is again credited to J.S. Fry
and Son, when in 1847 they mixed sugar and cocoa butter with chocolate powder to produce a
dry, grainy and not particularly tasty solid slab.Milk chocolate was a much later
invention and the eating chocolate of today began in 1876 when Henri Nestle and Daniel
Peters added milk and extra sugar to create the world's first milk chocolate bar. Later
still the American, Milton Hershey became the first to mass produce chocolate when in 1894
he began selling the world's first Hershey Bar for five cents. |
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