Humanity’s love affair with chocolate dates back more than five millennia. Produced from the seeds of tropical cocoa trees native to the rainforests of Central and South America, chocolate has long been considered “the food of the gods”, and later a delicacy for the elite. But for most of its history, it has actually been consumed as a bitter drink rather than the sweet, edible treat that it has become around the world.
What is the birthplace of chocolate?
Mayan cocoa drink
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Archaeologists have discovered the first traces of cocoa in pottery used by the ancient Mayo-Chinchipe culture 5,300 years ago in the upper Amazon region of Ecuador. Chocolate played an important political, spiritual, and economic role in ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, which crushed roasted cocoa beans into a paste that they mixed with water, vanilla, chili peppers and other spices to prepare a frothy chocolate drink.
The ancient Mesoamericans believed that chocolate was an energy booster and an aphrodisiac with mystical and medicinal qualities. The Mayans, who viewed cocoa as a gift from the gods, used chocolate for sacred ceremonies and funeral offerings. The wealthy Mayans drank frothy chocolate drinks, while the commoners consumed chocolate in a cold porridge-like dish.
As the peoples of the Aztec Empire spread across Mesoamerica in the 1400s, they too began to appreciate cocoa. Since they couldn’t grow it in the dry highlands of central Mexico, they traded with the Mayans for beans, which they even used as currency. (In the 1500s, the Aztecs could buy a turkey hen or a hare for 100 beans.) According to one account, the 16th century Aztec ruler Moctezuma II drank 50 cups of chocolate a day from a golden goblet to increase his libido.
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The Spanish introduce chocolate to the European elite
Chocolate arrived in Europe in the 1500s, likely brought by Spanish brothers and conquistadors who had traveled to the Americas. Although the Spaniards sweetened the bitter drink with cane sugar and cinnamon, one thing remained unchanged: chocolate reigned supreme as a delicious symbol of luxury, wealth and power – an expensive import sipped by royal lips and affordable only for the Spanish elites.
The popularity of chocolate eventually spread to other European courts, where aristocrats consumed it as a magic elixir with health benefits. To quench their growing thirst for chocolate, European powers established colonial plantations in equatorial regions around the world to grow cocoa and sugar. When diseases brought by Europeans depleted the Mesoamerican labor pool, African slaves were brought to the Americas to work on the plantations and maintain chocolate production.
Chocolate remained an aristocratic nectar until the 1828 invention of the cocoa press revolutionized its production. Attributed in various accounts to Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten or his father, Casparus, the cocoa press squeezed the fatty butter from the roasted cocoa beans, leaving behind a dry cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder that could be mixed. with liquids and other ingredients, poured into molds and solidified into edible and easily digestible chocolate. The cocoa press ushered in the modern era of chocolate by allowing it to be used as a confectionery ingredient, and the resulting drop in production costs made chocolate much more affordable.
READ MORE: Why the candy market exploded after World War I
Chocolate becomes a treat for the masses
In 1847, the British chocolate company JS Fry & Sons created the first edible chocolate bar from cocoa butter, cocoa powder and sugar. Rival chocolatier Cadbury’s, credited with pioneering the Valentine’s chocolate box and chocolate Easter egg, followed suit soon after and in 1854 he was granted a royal warrant as supplier of chocolate to Queen Victoria.
It is in Switzerland that the production of chocolate has made one of its greatest advances. In the 1870s, Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter used a powdered milk developed several years earlier by neighbor Henri Nestlé to produce the first bar of milk chocolate, and the couple eventually formed the Nestlé Company. The 1879 invention by Swiss chocolatier Rodolphe Lindt of the crushing machine – which used large stone rollers to mix and aerate the chocolate to give it a velvety texture and superior taste – enabled the mass production of chocolate with smooth and creamy milk.
In the United States, Milton Hershey pioneered the mass production of milk chocolate. After selling his caramel candy business for $ 1 million and producing his first bar of milk chocolate in 1900, Hershey purchased farmland near his birthplace in rural Pennsylvania and built a fully dedicated industrial town. chocolate. The grass-fed Holsteins from the surrounding dairy farms supplied the company’s milk and a town in Cuba supplied its sugar.
READ MORE: How Hershey’s Chocolate Helped Power Allied Troops During World War II
Chocolate bars gained popularity during the Roaring Twenties. By the end of the decade, more than 40,000 different candy bars were made in the United States, according to Susan Benjamin, candy historian and author of Sweet as Sin: The Unwrapped Story of How Candy Became America’s Favorite Delight. Father-son duo Frank C. Mars and Forrest Mars Sr. collaborated on the idea for the Milky Way bar, which hit the market in 1923 with the chocolate for its coating supplied by Hershey. The family business would compete with Hershey, and Forrest Mars Sr. then teamed up with the son of a Hershey executive to begin production of M&M candy in 1941.
HB Reese, who had worked as a dairy farmer and shipping foreman for Hershey, started his own confectionery business in 1923 and five years later introduced Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. They were then produced by Hershey – and one of the best-selling candies in the United States.
From its roots over 5,000 years ago, chocolate has grown into a big business. Global retail sales of chocolate in 2016 totaled nearly $ 100 billion, including nearly $ 25 billion in the United States alone, according to a Statista study. While the cocoa plant originated in the Americas, its cultivation has now moved to Africa, which is now the source of over two-thirds of the world’s cocoa production.
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