Linnaeus gave the tree a genus name meaning 'food of the gods' (1753)
Theobroma cacao. The pods grow directly from the trunk and main branches — cauliflory.
General knowledge · Food & drink
Chocolate
Mesoamerica from c.1900 BC; the eating bar from 1847
Food and drink — from a bitter Mesoamerican drink to a Quaker industry
Made from the fermented, roasted and ground seeds of Theobroma cacao, a tree of the American tropics whose Linnaean name means "food of the gods". For three thousand years it was drunk, not eaten, and in Aztec use it was bitter, spiced and sometimes frothed by pouring from a height; the beans served as currency. The modern solid bar required three nineteenth-century inventions: Coenraad van Houten's press for separating cocoa butter from the solids, Fry's moulded eating bar of 1847, and Rodolphe Lindt's conching machine of 1879, which gave it a smooth texture. In Britain the trade was dominated by Quaker families: Fry, Cadbury and Rowntree.
How to spot them
- ▸Theobroma cacao — a genus name meaning 'food of the gods'
- ▸Beans used as money by the Aztecs; the drink taken bitter and frothed
- ▸Three Quaker firms: one in Bristol, one in Birmingham, one in York
- ▸A Dutch press, an English bar and a Swiss machine that runs for days
- ▸The pods grow straight out of the trunk
Key facts
The Aztecs used the beans as currency and drank the liquid bitter, spiced and frothed
Xocolatl; the Nahuatl word cacahuatl gives 'cacao'. A turkey was worth about a hundred beans.
Coenraad van Houten's hydraulic press separated the fat from the solids and he treated the powder with alkali (1828)
Dutch processing, which also darkens the powder and mellows it.
J. S. Fry & Sons of Bristol moulded the first commercial bar for eating rather than drinking (1847)
By recombining cocoa butter with the powder and sugar to make a paste that could be cast.
Daniel Peter solved the water problem by using Henri Nestlé's condensed milk (1875)
The first successful milk bar, made in Vevey, Switzerland.
Rodolphe Lindt's machine, run for days, ground the particles small enough to feel smooth (1879)
Conching, named for the shell-shaped trough; it also drives off harsh volatile acids.
George Cadbury moved his works out of Birmingham in 1879 and built a model village for the workers (1879)
Bournville. Rowntree's New Earswick outside York followed the same Quaker pattern.
Launched in 1905 with more milk than any British rival, and the slogan about a glass and a half (1905)
Cadbury Dairy Milk.
Key ideas
- The bar exists because cocoa butter is solid below about 34 °C and liquid at blood heat — it melts in the mouth and nowhere else. Tempering, the controlled crystallisation of that fat into form V crystals, is what gives a good bar its snap and gloss.
Quick-fire facts
- •The tree is Theobroma cacao; theobroma is Greek for 'food of the gods', and theobromine is its characteristic alkaloid
- •Beans were used as currency in Mesoamerica, and the Aztec drink was taken bitter and frothed, not sweet
- •Coenraad van Houten patented his cocoa press in 1828 and developed alkali or 'Dutch' processing
- •J. S. Fry & Sons of Bristol produced the first moulded eating bar in 1847
- •Daniel Peter made the first successful milk chocolate in 1875 at Vevey, using Henri Nestlé's condensed milk
- •Rodolphe Lindt invented conching in 1879, named after the shell-shaped trough of the machine
- •Fry, Cadbury and Rowntree were all Quaker firms, based at Bristol, Birmingham and York
- •Cadbury built the model village of Bournville from 1879; Rowntree built New Earswick
- •Cadbury Dairy Milk was launched in 1905; Fry's Chocolate Cream, from 1866, is often called the first mass-produced bar
- •White chocolate contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids; Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana together grow most of the world's cocoa
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Sources
- Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe — The True History of Chocolate
- Harold McGee — On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen