It's a couple hours past dinner and I'm already making a mental trip into the kitchen, trying to think of what I might have in the fridge that would be fun to eat.
Hmm. What do I want? Something crunchy? Or something sweet, maybe? Something I can swish around my mouth and savor!
This is a typical evening scenario for me. And it's usually not too long before I start to get chocolate on the brain.
Have you ever wondered where chocolate comes from? Me too. So I got a book.
The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie & Michael Coe.
It turns out that we've been enjoying chocolate as we know it, in it's solid form, for only a tenth of it's existence in the history of mankind.
Since its earliest use some three millennia ago, it has been primarily enjoyed as a drink. It wasn't until the 19th century that a Dutchman found a way to solidify chocolate into a candy bar. (Bless him.)
Chocolate was most notably enjoyed by our South American friends, the Aztecs, who existed around the 15th and 16th centuries. Actually, it goes back a good bit further than that even, apparently starting with a civilization I'd never heard of, the Olmecs, who have been traced back as far as 1500 BC.
Chocolate, or "xocoatl", as it was called by the Aztecs, was reserved for princes, priests, high officials, and rich traders. It was a bitter and spicy mixture valued for its revitalizing virtues and enhancing sexual prowess (and, thankfully, it still does.)
In the many centuries of it's existence, all kinds of things have been added to chocolate to make it more interesting: vanilla, chiles, cinnamon, musk, orange blossom water, almonds, hazelnuts, jasmine, cloves and even wine.
The process that chocolate goes through to actually become the chocolate we consume is unbelievable.
A cocoa "pod" contains in it the cocoa beans which reside in a fruity white pulp. The beans themselves are extremely bitter and inedible. But it's actually these beans that become chocolate.
Once extracted, the beans undergo an arduously precise process that essentially involves fermentation, drying, roasting, crushing into a "grué", and grinding into a paste before they become anything even slightly resembling chocolate.
Chocolate has come a very long way since its early days in the hands of Aztec nobility. Once chocolate invaded Europe in the 1600s, it was enjoyed in chocolate houses everywhere, much like today's Starbucks coffee houses, where people gathered to visit among friends and businessmen met to negotiate.
Once we learned to produce it in quantity, chocolate made it's way into a wide variety of confections and pastry. And then Milton Hershey got a-hold of it and created an adulterated version that was cheap enough for every man to enjoy.
Today chocolate is enjoying a new resurgence as we discover finer productions by
Ghirardelli
(my favorite),
Valrhona
(a French chocolate from the Rhone Valley),
Callebaut
, and
Scharffen Berger
(who are now owned by those Hershey people.)
I hope I've inspired you to enjoy a chocolate bar today. In fact I would even bet money that you'll be having chocolate within two hours of closing this newsletter. But, hopefully, you'll stop and savor it and enjoy it in a different way this time.
Bon Appetit!
