Handmade Chocolates
R
sebud
The History of Chocolate
Cocoa was discovered by the Olmec and Mayans in South America and is believed to go back to 2000 bc. They ground up the beans, often with other spices and drank the bitter, savoury drink. As well as being a prized drink enjoyed by the socially important and elite, cocoa beans were a valuable commodity and were exchanged for food, livestock or land as the most common form of currency.
1528 Cocoa beans reached Spain with the Spanish explorer, Cortes. However, they were considered too bitter for the European palate to be enjoyed and were used mostly for medicinal purposes from increasing fertility to curing the common cold. It was also believed to relieve depression and enhance brainpower. Indeed the low levels of serotonin and cafeeine may well contribute to this explanation.
Nowadays cocoa is known to have many health benefits and is lauded for its antioxidant potential and thought to help lower cholesterol. There is even evidence to suggest that it may help reduce the risk of cardiovasvular problems, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and can slow down cognitive decline (I’m definitely going to test this one out).
Today we are tend to take our chocolate, sweet, but still enjoy some of those ancient savoury connections like chilli and chocolate. We have Mexican nuns to thank for the transition to sweet chocolate. They added honey, cinnamon and sugar to cocoa to make a popular drink.
1590 – or thereabouts = Spanish monks introduced the sweet sensation to Spain Their version was sweetened with honey and vanilla and became the basis for today’s chocolate recipe.
Over the next one sixty years, chocolate spread through Italy, France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
1657 Chocolate reaches England.
Throughout most of its history, the cocoa bean has been roasted and ground to be used as a drink. The next major development changed this forever.
1846. Fry’s chocolate factory in Bristol combined cocoa powder, cocoa butter and sugar to produce a solid bar. Two years later Cadburys produced a similar product. Over the next few years the Industrial Revolution and mechanisation all over Europe brought chocolate to the masses.
1875 In Switzerland, Daniel Peter created the first milk chocolate bar using powdered milk, an invention developed by Henri Nestle.
Each country creatively developed chocolate in different ways; the Italians became famous for using hazelnuts with chocolate; the French and the Belgians making sophisticated truffles and pralines. The Belgians created moulds of chocolates and piped various fillings inside while the Swiss approach was to make the centres first and then dip them (enrobe them in chocolate afterwards.
Both the Swiss and Belgian methods are the foundations for chocolatiers today and I am at the start of my journey, following the pathway made by those pioneers of chocolate all those years ago.
Chocolate is a fascinating subject and you can read more here