History of chocolate

THE HISTORY OF CHOCOLATE

Three thousand years ago, the civilizations living in the heart of equatorial Central America were responsible for the first cultivation of the tree from which chocolate is derived. 

 Maya, Toltec and Aztec Civilizations:

There were many ancient Mesoamerican civilizations trying to establish themselves in the region, and in the 4th Century AD the Maya people lived in the area of Central America which now consists of Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize and southern Mexico (the Chiapas and Tabasco provinces).

The Maya called the cacao tree cacahuaquchtl.  They believed that the tree belonged to the Gods, and that the pods on the tree trunk were an offering to them from the Gods.  They were a very artistic, intellectual and spiritual people.  They built magnificent stone palaces and temples, carving into the sacred walls images of cacao pods, which to them represented a symbol of life and fertility.  They also devised a series of hieroglyphics.  Their writing was highly sophisticated, probably only members of the higher classes were able to read their symbols.  In the codices there are drawings of gods performing religious rituals in which cacao pods appear, and the texts refer to cacao as the ‘god’s food’.

 The Maya were the first people to make a bitter drink from cacao beans, and this was considered a luxury drink enjoyed only by kings and noblemen.  It could be made in several different ways, using maize to thicken it, or by adding spices such as chilli and black pepper.  The Maya discovered it could be made frothy by pouring it from a great height from one bowl to another.

Around AD 900 the extremely civilized Toltecs settled in the former Mayan territory.  The Toltec King Quetzalcoatl was believed to be the God of Air, whose mission it was to bring the seeds of the cacao tree from Eden to man.  The Toltecs were followed by the Aztecs, who left their homes in North West Mexico.  They came to the Valley of Mexico named Anahuac, led by their Chieftain, Tenoch.  Tenoch had a vision that the Aztec God of Sun and War, Huitzilopochtli, told him to lead his people to a swampy island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. He was told to look for an eagle perched on a cactus, growing from a rock or cave surrounded by water. They were to build their city there. Thus, according to Huitzilopochtli's command, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was founded in AD 1325 on a small rocky island in the lake of the Valley of Mexico.

To the Aztecs, chocolate was a source of spiritual wisdom and energy.  It was a favourite drink at weddings, and was also given to the Aztec warriors to fortify them. 

 The drink which the Aztecs made from cacao beans was at the heart of many rituals and ceremonies, but was nothing like the chocolate drink we know today.  Their beverage was called xocolatl, and was quite bitter and greasy.  A grinding stone, or ‘metate, was an important part of the production process, used to grind the cacao beans quite small.  The chocolate was made frothy by using a ‘molinillo’ – which was made of wood and had shaped paddles which fitted into the lid of the chocolate pot.  There are many depictions of these rituals on the Aztec hieroglyphics, especially showing chocolate being offered to the Gods.

 In 1502, Christopher Columbus on his fourth and final journey to the Caribbean reached the island of Guanaja off the Honduran coast.  He was greeted by Aztecs who offered him sackfuls of cacao beans in exchange for some of his own merchandise.  He took some beans back to Spain, but did not realise their future economic worth.  In 1519 the Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés arrived in the New World.  The Aztec Emperor Montezuma II believed Cortés to be a reincarnation of Quetzalcoatl, the exiled Toltec god-King whose return had been predicted to take place in the same year. 

After a royal welcome, Emperor Montezuma realised his mistake.  Cortés recognized the insecurity of his position and enlisted the help of sympathetic natives, and they took Montezuma prisoner.  Within two or three years he brought down the Aztec kingdom.  Unlike Columbus, Cortés had realized the enormous economic value of the cacao bean, both as a food and as a source of currency – a slave could be bought for 100 beans, or a rabbit for 4 beans.  Cortés set up plantations around the Caribbean and convinced King Carlos I of Spain of the potential of the New World health drink.

Chocolate found its way into Spain through merchants and also through contact between New World convents and monasteries.  The Netherlands became part of the Spanish territories in the fourteenth century, and because of this the Dutch were familiar with chocolate from an early stage.  They transplanted trees in Java and Sumatra in the 17th Century.  The Dutch West India Company defied the Spanish ban on foreign traders and started shipping cacao beans in bulk to Amsterdam during the seventeenth century, as well as setting up their own processing plants in the Netherlands.    

In the 18th Century the Swedish botanist Linnaeus named the cacao tree Theobroma Cacao, meaning ‘drink of the gods’, from the Greek words theos – god and broma – beverage.

EARLY PROCESSING AND ORIGINS OF CHOCOLATE AS CONFECTIONERY

The Spanish were the first to add sugar and sweet spices such as cinnamon and aniseed to the drink, and in 1580, the first chocolate processing plant was set up in Spain, and gradually popularity spread to other countries.  The first manufacturing process by the Spanish was very basic : after the preliminary roasting, de-husking and grinding, the cacao mass would be ground again to a fine paste with plenty of sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and annatto.  The ‘chocolate’ was formed into blocks, but even so these were only used for making the beverage, not confectionery.  It was not until the 19th Century that the process was revolutionised.

In the early process, the beverage was extremely rich as it contained a fatty substance known today as cacao butter, which tended to rise to the surface.  Starchy substances were added to absorb the fat, (a process similar to the Aztecs adding ground maize).  In 1828 a Dutch chemist, Coenraad Van Houten, patented an efficient hydraulic press which extracted about fifty per cent of the cacao butter, leaving behind a refined, brittle residue that could be pulverized into a fine powder.  This led to the manufacture of what we now know as cocoa powder, but which in Van Houten’s day was called cocoa essence.  After ten years, Van Houten sold his rights to the patent of his machine, and the machine came into general use.  Having separated the butter, the industry was left to think what to do with it.  One cocoa manufacturer came up with the idea of melting and mixing it with ground cacao beans and sugar.  The resulting mixture was a paste which was thin enough to be poured into a mould and eaten, and it is from this that ‘eating’ chocolate was developed.

GROWING AND HARVESTING THE CACAO BEAN

 FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS..

 Cocoa is the third most valued commodity in the world today, after sugar and coffee. Chocolate starts life as a little cocoa bean which grows in pods on the “Theobroma” cacao tree, an evergreen tree which thrives in tropical areas lying between twenty degrees north and twenty degrees south of the equator. The pods can be a variety of colours when ripe, from red, green, purple, yellow to orange.  They can weigh up to one kilo, and each pod contains 20 – 40 beans embedded in a soft white pulp.

 HARVESTING

The picker ensures the pod is ready for picking by tapping the pod, which takes years of practice to get right!  Usually harvesting takes place from May to December, although in some places such as West Africa, harvesting is done between September to February. 

 FERMENTING

Once cut, the pods are opened.  Once exposed to the light, the cream coloured beans immediately turn a shade of purple showing they are now ready for fermentation. The beans are scooped out together with their surrounding pulp and arranged carefully on beds of banana leaves.  The pulp and beans are covered with more banana leaves and left for five or six days to ferment.  The action of fermentation kills the beans and breaks down the sugars, while other compounds and enzymes react together to produce the first chocolate flavours, and the colour changes from purple to chocolate brown.

DRYING

After fermentation the beans are spread out on bamboo mats or wooden drying floor.  Drying takes between 10 and 20, and the beans are regularly turned to keep them well aired to prevent mould forming.  The dried beans must contain less than 7% or 8% moisture.

 CLEANING

Cacao beans arrive at a chocolate factory in the condition in which they leave the plantations.  They are still a raw material with the edible part enclosed inside the hard skin.  The beans are cleaned and stones removed. 

 ROASTING

The beans are roasted at over a hundred degrees centigrade to develop the rich flavour and characteristic colour of cocoa.  They are cooled as quickly as possible to prevent further internal roasting.

GRINDING

After roasting, the beans are forced against crushing plates to break them apart and free the kernels (or ‘nibs’ as they are called).

The nibs are ground down to obtain a dark brown mixture of very fine cocoa particles and rich cocoa butter.  This is called COCOA MASS.  The cocoa mass is subjected to high pressure so that the cocoa butter is squeezed out until the pure cocoa powder is left.

COCOA POWDER OR EATING CHOCOLATE?

At this stage, further treatment depends on whether it is to be made into cocoa powder or eating chocolate.

For eating chocolate, the roasted and ground nibs are mixed with pulverized sugar and enriched with some of the cocoa butter.  The mixture then goes to the mélangeur, a round machine with a horizontal rotating base on which run heavy rollers.  The paste which is discharged resembles well-kneaded dough. 

The chocolate paste is then refined, which means it is placed between a series of rollers until it is wafer thin.  The particles of cocoa, sugar and vanilla are so fine that they cannot be felt on the tongue.  This process also continues to develop the flavour of the chocolate. 

For some mass producers, this is the end of the process but the finest quality chocolate needs further treatment, known as ‘conching’.

CONCHING

The conching machine was invented in 1880 by the Swiss chocolatier Rodolfe Lindt.  The name comes from the French word conche meaning shell, derived from the shape of the large shell-shaped container of the machine.  The machine agitates the liquid chocolate gently over a period of days.  The flavour of the chocolate is developed and mellowed, any residual bitterness is removed and the texture reaches that essential velvety smoothness.

During conching various flavours are added such as vanilla, cloves or cinnamon.  Vanilla is almost always used and dates back to the days of the Aztecs.

TEMPERING

The chocolate mass is now ready for tempering, the final stage before putting the chocolate into moulds for eating.  The chocolate is fed into tempering kettles where it is stirred and carefully cooled whilst still remaining liquid.  This is a very difficult process since the cacao butter contains various types of fat, all with different melting and setting points.  If the chocolate mass is cooled too slowly, some fats will remain liquid and separate from the mass, creating bloom on the surface when the chocolate finally solidifies.  Tempering causes rapid cooling, resulting in a more even distribution of the various fats.

DID YOU KNOW…. That the complex flavour of chocolate is created by over FIVE HUNDRED flavour compounds found in cocoa after fermentation, drying, roasting and conching.  This is greater than in most foods!