Chocolate
If you can’t imagine life without chocolate you’re lucky you weren’t born before the sixteenth century until then chocolate only existed in Mesoamerica in a form quite different from what we know as far back as 1900 BCE the people of that region had learned to prepare the beans of the native cacao tree the earliest records tell us the beans were ground and mixed with cornmeal and chili peppers to create a drink not a relaxing cup of hot cocoa but a bitter invigorating concoction frothing with foam and if you thought we make a big deal about chocolate today the Mesoamericans had us beat they believed that cacao was a heavenly food gifted to humans by a feathered serpent God known to the Maya as Kukulcan and to the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl Aztecs used cacao beans as currency and drank chocolate at royal feasts gave it to soldiers as a reward for success in battle and used it in rituals the first transatlantic chocolate encounter occurred in 1519.
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when air nan Cortez visited the court of Montezuma at Tenochtitlan as recorded by Cortez lieutenant the King had fifty jugs of the drink brought out and poured into golden cups when the colonists returned with shipments of the strange new bean missionaries salacious accounts of native customs gave it a reputation as an aphrodisiac at first it’s bitter taste made it suitable as a medicine for ailments like upset stomachs but sweetening it with honey sugar or vanilla quickly made chocolate a popular delicacy in a Spanish court and soon no aristocratic home was complete without dedicated chocolate where the fashionable drink was difficult and time-consuming to produce on a large scale that involved using plantations and imported slave labor in the Caribbean and on islands off the coast of Africa.
The world of chocolate would change forever in 1828 with the introduction of the cocoa press by Konrad Van Houten of Amsterdam Van Houten’s invention could separate the Coco’s natural fat or cocoa butter this left of powder that could be mixed into a drinkable solution or recombined with the cocoa butter to create the solid chocolate we know today not long after a Swiss chocolatier named Daniel Peter added powdered milk to the mix thus inventing milk chocolate by the 20th century chocolate was no longer an elite luxury but had become a treat for the public meeting the massive demand required more cultivation of cocoa which can only grow near the equator now instead of African slaves being shipped to South American cocoa plantations cocoa production itself would shift to West Africa with cote de voir avec there have been horrific abuses of human rights many of the plantations throughout West Africa which supply Western companies use slave and child labor with an estimation of more than two million children affected this is a complex problem that persists despite efforts from major chocolate companies to partner with African nations to reduce child and indentured labour practices today chocolate has established itself in the rituals of our modern culture due to its colonial association with native cultures combined with the power of advertising chocolate retains an aura of something sensual decadent and forbidden yet knowing more about its fascinating and often cruel history as well as its production today tells us where these associations originate and what they hide so as you unwrap your next bar of chocolate take a moment to consider that not everything about chocolate is sweet.
