History of Chocolate
Chocolate. The mere mention of the word conjures up a vast array of products and emotions. From a hot frothy beverage to mass-produced, individually wrapped bars to premium handcrafted truffles, chocolate is no longer just a “Food of the Gods” limited to consumption solely by the elite. Key innovations in the nineteenth century placed chocolate within reach of every strata of humanity—and humanity has responded, continuing our love affair with the seeds of a once-wild South American tree in more ways than its original suitors could ever have imagined.
Origins of Cacao
Modern chocolate is derived from a few key subspecies of a specific New World cacao tree now grown around the world (between 20°N and 20°S) to serve the global chocolate industry. Though its precise origins remain uncertain, the species Theobroma cacao is generally believed to have originally evolved in South America, after which it was variously distributed and domesticated north through the tropics into Mesoamerica, perhaps on the move as early as the first millennium B.C. (McNeil 2006).
But DNA studies have located the likely origin of the species in the Amazon River basin or near the Andean Lake Maracaibo in modern-day Venezuela. Additionally, the widest array of related genera and species can be found in South America. But aside from the periodic use of the less-desirable Theobroma bicolor (and the Brazilian fruit Theobroma grandiflora called Cupuaçu) in chocolate manufacturing, it is the species cacao and its varieties that has been so highly sought-after by chocolate lovers for some three thousand years (Presilla 2001).
Pre-Columbian History
It is generally assumed that wild relatives of Theobroma cacao were gathered to use the fleshy pulp either fresh or fermented to produce an alcoholic beverage. It is also possible that early domestication of cacao was predicated upon the complex processing of the cacao seeds since the original cultivators may well have understood the multifold advantages of the crop (Henderson and Joyce 2006). But domestication appears to have first taken place further north, in Mesoamerica. Though linguists have reconstructed likely precedent for the presence of cacao among the early Olmec civilization, no decipherable written record survives. Even the name Olmec is a word of the Aztecs attributed to later people who inhabited the area.
But evidence of crop domestication, most importantly maize (and the associated process called “nixtamalization” that renders corn digestible and nutritious enough to support burgeoning civilizations), suggests a degree of cultural sophistication that, along with common words in subsequent language groups, may place the original domestication of cacao sometime in the first millennium B.C. (Coe and Coe 2007). At the very least, traces of cacao residue in artifacts suggest the seed was in use in the era, but to what extent it is not certain (McNeil 2006).
The Olmec were in full decline by 400 B.C. and gave way to a culture called “Izapan” and, elsewhere, the ascending Maya. There is still ambiguity about early use of cacao among these cultures, but the Maya in particular seem to have attributed religious significance to cacao which, along with maize, plays a prominent role in their mythology. In addition, they developed a complex social ritual surrounding the preparation and consumption of cacao, most notably the kakaw beverage. By pouring the liquid from a height between two vessels, prepared cacao formed a foamy head that was highly prized among both Mayans and Aztecs (though perhaps not by all levels of society, as it may have been a symbol of status).
The beverage may be the most important use of cacao, as evidenced by funerary drinking vessels that have been analyzed and found to have once held something containing key cacao alkaloids. Still, at the twilight of their civilization before Spanish conquest, the late Mayan and Aztec civilizations must have had multiple uses for the seeds, important as currency and in mercantilism, but clearly in mixed culinary beverage applications and with many different complementary flavors.
Much about the pre-Columbian civilizations is taken from visiting Europeans’ accounts of their encounters with the indigenous peoples, whether the more carefully constructed narratives of Christian missionaries or the typically less sympathetic versions provided by the Conquistadors. But the basis for the processing of cacao has remained relatively unchanged for centuries, passed down through generations and to the European invaders (Coe and Coe 2007). It is the ultimate form that raw cacao takes that has varied with cultures and with time. At the chemical level, however, what has remained the same (aside from taste) are some key reasons for chocolate’s allure and its quasi-addictive quality.
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