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Chocolate is believed to date back to the ancient Maya Indians, who inhabited the Yucutan Peninsula of Southern Mexico as far as back as 500AD. The word cacao is believed to be derived from this Maya civilisation.
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Chocolate at this time was nothing like the chocolate we know today. Roasted cacoa beans were ground to a powder and mixed with water or wine, to which flavourings such as pimiento or chili powder, cornmeal and even hallucinogenic mushrooms were added. The result was a bitter tasting, frothy drink used primarily as a cure and aphrodisiac. Hence, the root of chocolate's connection with love.
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In the Aztec culture, the same drink was believed to be sacred and promote stamina. A luxury limited to warriors, elite circles and nobility, the Aztec Emperor, Montezuma, was alleged to have consumed 50 cups of this prized drink, cacahuatl, every day, making the worlds biggest chocoholic.Cacao beans were so valuable to this civilisation, they used it as their currency, a case where money really did grow on trees.
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It was Christopher Columbus on his fourth and final journey to the Carribean in 1502, who brought chocolate to Europe. He was astonished at the Atzec's high regard for this commodity and presented it to the Spanish Court. The Europeans did not care much for this xocalatl complaining it was too bitter.
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It wasn't until 20 years later, when Hernando Cortez introduced this commodity to the court of Charles V that chocolate became popular. The Europeans replaced the chili flavourings with vanilla and sugar making chocolate a lot more palatable.
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The 16th and 17th Centuries saw the advent of chocolate being made into paste form, shaped and sold in boxes, from which a chocolate drink was be prepared. Chocolate was still, however, considered a luxury and available only to those who could afford it.
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Chocolate production in other European countries eventually provided considerable competition to the once Spanish Monopoly and prices began to fall to that everyone could enjoy this popular drink.
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The idea of eating chocolate was still a bizarre concept. In 1928, Conrad J van Houten patented the process of alkalizing chocolate. Dutching, named after his country of origin, became the foundation of chocolate as we know it today.
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An Englishman, Joseph Storrs Fry produced the first eating chocolate in 1849, making our favourite treat less than 200 years old!
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In 1869 the invention of powdered milk by a Swiss chemist, Henri Nestle, gave the Swiss the lead in refining eating chocolate. Ten short years later, Daniel Peter introduced the world to milk chocolate and Rudolphe Lindt followed suit with a method of making chocolate more blendable, a process known as conching.
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