Chocolate, once a guilty pleasure, now comes recommended thanks to its heart-healthy benefits, most evident in dark chocolate with its high percentage of cocoa antioxidants. I love my chocolate healthful…and dark, sensual, luscious, and… Sorry. It’s hard to stay focused with chocolate on the tip of my tongue. We’re all smarty pants when we learn the latest nuggets of research, but chocolate wisdom began long before the world became intimate with this diabolically delicious and heavenly treat.
Rewind the calendar to pre-Gregorian dates—before the Mayan calendar posted Day One. Wild cacao trees sprouted circa 1400—1500 B.C. in the tropical Andean foothills of what’s now Venezuela and Columbia, where they still staunchly stand, though their range has diminished. The trees’ fruit was eagerly consumed by animals and birds, who then spread the seeds and cleverly fertilized them in one fell swoop.
Historians date early cultivation of cacao trees back to the pre-Mayan Olmecs, whose language included the word “cacao,” shattering the theory that the Maya began our chocolate love affair. Around 300 A.D., the Olmecs vanished; enter the Maya, who worshipped the tree called cacahuaquchtl (try ordering a cup of that!) and believed its pods were gifts from the deities. Mayan records describe preparations of “the food of the gods,” or gods’ pods, with consistencies from heavy paste to light, spiced liquid; and their art depicts pods used as vessels in sacred rites.
In 900 A.D., exit the Maya; enter the Toltecs, who continued Mayan cacao traditions. Legend says their King Quetzalcoatl, an embodiment of the mythical feathered serpent of the same name, prophesied in 999 the coming of “white-faced gods” from the east and/or promised to return in 1519 as a “white-faced king” looking for his resting place. The myth is both confused and confusing, but there’ve been too many intervening years to verify which is correct, okay? Aztecs conquered Toltecs in 1325 and drank the same drink of ground sun beans in frothy spiced water. They believed the beans were a source of strength and fed them to battle-bound warriors. So valued were the beans that they were the only currency accepted as tax payment. The poster child for cacao was Aztec ruler Montezuma, reputed to have drunk fifty cups of cacao a day from a golden cup. Living the good life, he saw cacao’s by-product of vim and vigor as aphrodisiacal potential, and downed more shots prior to visiting his harem. Monte, Monte, Monte…beware of Toltec myth and Spanish conquistadors.
Columbus, searching for the elusive passage to the Indian Ocean, landed on Guanga, an island off Honduras, where natives offered him cacao beans to pay for goods on the Santa Maria. An Aztec chief then came bearing gifts, including the enigmatic cacao beans, and prepared xocalatl, which means “bitter water.” Columbus wasn’t impressed, but took the beans, claimed the land for Spain, and left.
Back in Spain, he showed his beans to the royal court like Jack showing his magic beans. These beans were spurned as well for their bitter taste; and Columbus, Ferdinand, Isabella, and Spain missed the chocolate boat for several decades. However, Hernando Cortez knew beneficial beans when he saw them. Arriving in the year (you guessed it) 1519, he was joyfully welcomed by Montezuma, who took him for King Quetzacoatl. In return, Cortez took him prisoner and took his kingdom, dignity, and beans. Spain got on board the good ship Cocoa Pop when Cortez returned, proclaiming, “One beaker [of chocolate] keeps a soldier fresh for the whole day” and described huge cacao plantations. With beans and the tool to whip up Xocolatti, he made a cup for Charles V, whose first reaction was “Yuck!” With sugarcane and spices added, he changed his tune and introduced it to his court as a sweetened hot drink made by adding boiling water to cacao bean paste and sugar. Later the Spaniards added ginger, peppers, nutmeg, and cinnamon and created an implement called a molonillio copied from Mayan carved wooden frothers.
For eighty years, Spain cultivated cacao in its New World colonies, importing it as pressed tablets or slabs processed by Spanish colonial monks. Spain hoarded its chocolate, protecting it from would-be usurpers. Nevertheless, it’s hard to keep a dark secret. In the 1600s, word and chocolate leaked. Soon Europe was chocolate-covered, and European colonies in Africa and Malaysia began to raise cacao (called “cocoa” in and on other tongues). Chocolate was the darling—and chocolate houses the rage—of the wealthy. It was consumed enough to cause a tiff between Dominican and Jesuit clergy over its consumption during Lent. The Pope settled it when he proclaimed that drinking chocolate didn’t break the Lenten fast and was advisable to keep up strength. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the British, American colonists made chocolate from sneaky beans shipped from the West Indies, and it became a colonial staple. In 1765, Dr. James Baker converted a gristmill into the first water-powered chocolate factory and sold Baker’s chocolate in “hard cakes” of cocoa paste. When the tea tax was levied, chocolate was the patriotic alternative.
Innovations like Baker’s changed production. A charcoal-fired table for grinding was followed by the 1780 invention of the steam engine, which further decreased grinding labor and the product’s price. One hundred years later, a Dutch chemist developed a process that squeezed out cocoa butter to get dry cocoa powder for a more consistent, cheaper product; and the development of powdered milk for infant formula contributed to the start of chocolate bars with long shelf lives. Major chocolate producers like Cadbury, Nestle, Hershey’s, Godiva, and Lindt refined the product into current choices, tempting us in grocery stores.
We’re far removed from ancient harvesting and processing methods, though labor is still by hand. One person can harvest 650 pods per day from cacao trees, which bear pendulous pods growing out of the trunk or branches, requiring care to cleanly cut the pods’ stalks with a sharp blade to avoid wounding the tree. A pruning hook on the end of a long pole reaches pods on high branches. Cut pods are gathered together, then hit in the center with a wooden club to split them in half, making it easy to scoop out forty to sixty purple beans as well as the surrounding sweet, white pulp, all of which is heaped in layers and covered with banana leaves to “sweat” and ferment for four to seven days. If over-sweated, beans are ruined; if under-sweated, they taste like “raw mildew.”
During fermentation, the pulp liquefies, oozing away to leave the beans for drying. The drying takes place over the course of fourteen days, when the beans are constantly raked or shuffled by bare-footed workers. When dry, they’re cracked and the shells separate from the “nibs,” the pieces used to make chocolate. When roasted, nibs acquire their distinct flavor, aroma, and rich color. Roasted nibs are stone-ground and reduced to a thick liquid containing cocoa butter, which solidifies when cooled. This is from whence all chocolate comes.
Because cocoa-tending is labor intensive, many young people in cocoa-producing areas find other jobs with higher pay, often turning to oil companies and turning their backs on the culture that has honored nature and its produce for longer than the young can grasp. Those who hold cacao trees dear and honor the ways of their ancestors fear the venerable culture is on the brink of disintegration. Chocoholics should fear the same.
Lucy Van Pelt: “All I really need is love, but a little bit of chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Lucy Van Hume agrees that chocolate and love go hand in hand. Chocolate’s caffeine and theobromine stimulate serotonin and endorphin production, while its chemical “love compound,” PEA, puts us in the mood for you-know-what; hence, Valentine’s Day chocolates. Chocolate bunnies remain an enigma, but so much chocolate in such a short time inspired the article.
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