Did you know that chocolate was originally a drink?
In the West, when we think of chocolate, the first image that comes to mind is a chocolate bar, that is, in its solid, sweet state. However, for nine-tenths of its long history, chocolate was drunk, not eaten! To give you another idea of the scale, only one-fifth of chocolate's existence occurred after the fall of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, to the Spanish in 1521.
In fact, it was the first exotic drink to arrive in Europe, more precisely at the court of Spain where Charles V gave it a rather mixed reception.
It is suspected that the first use of the cocoa pod was not a chocolate drink made with the bitter beans contained in this pod but rather an alcoholic drink, a kind of beer, made with the white pulp or mucilage that surrounds the beans. Indeed, this mucilage is very interesting in terms of taste and animals are not mistaken because it is to consume it that they break the pods. This pulp is fruity, sweet and slightly acidic and, just like the beans, it has a wide variety of aromas depending on the variety of cocoa.
Using chemistry and linguistics, archaeological studies have successfully dated the use of the cacao fruit to approximately 4,000 years ago. Theobromine (an alkaloid found only in cacao, hence the scientific name for the cacao tree, Theobroma Cacao) has been found inside ceramic jars. The Olmec civilization (long before the Aztecs and Mayans) had a glyph associated with the word cacao: kakaw.
How did they drink cocoa?
Mayans and Aztecs ground the beans to make a paste that they added to water to make the chocolate drink (cacahuatl). But to believe that the chocolate prepared by Mesoamerican civilizations before the Spanish conquest was a simple chocolate drink would be a misunderstanding linked to the fantasy we have around this beverage. Chocolate consisted of a vast and complex palette of drinks, gruels, powders and porridges to which a wide range of flavorings were added, the most well-known being chili powder (chilcacahuatl). Given the wide variety of chilies, the palette could range from milder chilies to very hot drinks. Corn flour could also be present in their chocolate recipes, chocolate flavored with flowers, vanilla, black pepper ... and above all their chocolate was not sweet!
In this respect, we could consider that our current devotion to consuming the purest possible chocolate would be singularly due to a lack of imagination, at least from the point of view of our ancestors!
Depictions show how when preparing chocolate, women pour the drink from one container to another from a certain height to create foam, which was greatly appreciated!, the term "yom cacao" meaning cocoa foam.
So what about more recent history?
After the Spanish captured Tenochtitlan in 1521, the chocolate drink was creolized and adapted to the tastes of the conquistadors. And that's when sugar made its appearance! Chocolate was sweetened to suit European tastes, the chocolate drink was transformed, renamed, its taste modified, and it was after undergoing all these changes that it was brought back to the Spanish court.
Upon its arrival in Europe, chocolate was considered a medicine and had to adapt to the fasting requirements of Catholic countries.
Chocolate continued to be a beverage whose recipes adapted to the tastes of different European countries and eras until the first chocolate bar appeared in 1847 by the Fry Brothers in the United Kingdom. This new product, a mixture of cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and sugar, molded into bars, was presented in 1849 at an exhibition in Birmingham under the name "Chocolate Delicious to Eat."
At Chocolating®, we want to revive the origins of cocoa consumption and give it a place of honor in our habits and so we design Chocolating® as the “Delicious Drinkable Chocolate”.
