Chocolate


The First Cacao Growers

Mayans were the first to cultivate cacao trees, perhaps as early as the seventh century. They processed the chocolate by roasting the cacao beans in earthern jars and then crushing the cacao beans on a stone grinder called a metate. The oily cacao beans produced a peanut butter-like paste that was then formed into small cakes. When the Indians wanted a drink of cocoa, they broke off a small piece of dried cake and mixed it with hot water. Later the Aztecs adopted the same method. They named the drink ‘chocolatl’.

The Story of Chocolate

The story of chocolate as we know it begins with the discovery of America. Until 1492, the old world knew nothing at all about chocolate. The court of King Ferdinand got its first look at the principal ingredient of chocolate when Columbus returned from his voyage of 1492 and brought the Spanish throne many strange and wonderful things including a few dark brown cacao beans which proved to be the source of all chocolate and cocoa. It remained for Hernando Cortez the great Spanish explorer to discover the possibilities of cacao beans. During his conquest of Mexico, Hernando Cortez found the Aztec Indians using cacao beans in the preparation of their drink ‘Chocolatl’. Emperor Montezuma in 1519 served chocolatl to his Spanish guests in golden goblets, treating it like ambrosia for the gods. Emperor Montezuma’s chocolatly was very bitter, and the Spaniards did not find it to their liking. To make chocolatl more flavourul, Hernando Cortez conceived the idea of sweetening it with cane sugar.

Spain proceeded to plant cacao in its overseas possessions that proved very profitable. The Spaniards succeeded in keeping the art of the cacao industry a secret from the rest of Europe for almost one hundred years. Spanish monks leaked the secret out finally and it was not long before chocolate was acclaimed throughout Europe as a delicious, health-giving food. It even reigned as the drink at the fashionable Court of France. Chocolate drinking spread across the Channel to England and in 1657 the first of many famous English Chocolate Houses appeared.

The hand methods of manufacture used by small shops gave way in time to mass production of chocolate, the transition being hastened by the advent of a steam engine capable of handling the cacao grinding process. By 1730 chocolate was within financial reach of others beside the very wealthy. The invention of the cocoa press in 1828 did much to make chocolate even more economical and helped to improve the quality of chocolate by squeezing out part of the cocoa butter. From this point on, drinking chocolate had more of the smooth consistency and pleasing flavour. The nineteenth Century saw two more revolutionary developments in the history of chocolate. The first of these took place in 1876 when Daniel Peter at Verey, Switzerland invented a way of making milk chocolate for eating. The second was the subsequent development of fondant chocolate, a smooth and velvety variety that had completely replaced the old coarse-grained chocolate which formerly dominated the world market.

Chocolate in America

It was in pre-Revolutionary New England in 1765 that the first chocolate factory was established. The American chocolate story began in the fall of 1764 when Dr James Baker befriended a young Irish immigrant named John Hannon - a chocolate maker by trade in Ireland. John Hannon complained to Dr James Baker that there was no chocolate mill in the New World. Dr James Baker decided to help John Hannon. He leased a mill on the banks of the Neponset River in Dorchester, Massachusetts, obtained a run of millstones and a set of kettles and supplied the necessary capital. The new chocolate mill prospered and by 1777 John Hannon was advertising his product. An advertisement published at Boston promotes ‘Hannon’s Best CHOCOLATE, marked upon each cake. Warranted pure and ground exceedingly fine. Where may be had any quantity, from 50 wt. to a ton, for cash or cocoa, at his mills in Milton. If the chocolate does not prove good the money will be returned.

1779 – Massachusetts chocolate maker, John Hannon disappears at sea after sailing for the West Indies to buy cacao beans. Dr James Baker takes over the company from John Hannon’s widow. Dr James Baker continued the business from 1780 to 1804 with his son, Edmond as partner. In 1818 Edmond’s son, Walter, joined as a partner and Edmond retired in 1824. The name Baker Chocolate Company is adopted by the 60-year-old Hannon Chocolate Company now operated by Walter Baker, grandson of Dr James Baker who advertises his chocolate as far west as Ohio and Indiana. In 1897 the cocoa and chocolate manufacturing establishment of Walter Baker and Company at Dorchester, Massachusetts was not only the oldest but also the largest of its kind on this continent. By 1920 Walter Baker & Co Ltd. Canadian Mills were at Montreal.

Chocolate Historical Facts

1815 - Dutch chocolate and cocoa merchant, Coenraad J. Van Houten established a chocolate factory that began the use of chocolate as a food in addition to its use as a beverage. Cocoa was considered an aristocratic drink before the French Revolution and its popularity has waned since 1789, partly because coffee was considered more protestant and businesslike, partly because of cocoa’s association with courtiers and clergymen (especially Jesuits, who have been accused of trying to monopolise the cacao trade). Van Houten had been in business since 1806.

1818 – Swiss chocolate maker Amedee Kohler founded a firm that specialised in making connections. French confectioners have been making chocolate almonds since 1670 and chocolate has long been used to flavour light cakes known as puffs.

1819 – The world’s first eating chocolate to be produced commercially was manufactured at Vevey, Switzerland by Francois-Louis Cailler, 23, who introduces the first chocolate to be prepared and sold in blocks made by machine. (Chocolate for beverage use has long been sold in cakes made with a cornstarch binder and often containing sugar and spices). Cailler started a company that specialised in fondants, but his chocolate is not candy.

1824 – Cadbury’s chocolate had its beginnings in a tea and coffee shop opened by Birmingham, England, Quaker John Cadbury, 23, who had served an apprenticeship at Lead’s and for bonded teahouses in London. John Cadbury experimented with grinding cocoa beans using a mortar and pestle. In 1841, John Cadbury’s product list included 15 kinds of drinking and eating chocolate and 10 forms of cocoa.

1828 – Coenraad J. Van Houten creates a pulverized cocoa powder that makes it possible to brew a cup of instant cocoa and will be the forerunner of other instant beverages. Dutch chocolate maker, Conrod J. Van Houten patents an inexpensive method for pressing the fat from roasted cacao beans and produces the world’s first chocolate candy. The de-fatted ‘mass’ can be used to make a powder and Van Houten found that by adding the extra cocoa butter, as it will be called, to an experimental mixture of cocoa powder and sugar, the resulting sticky substance cools into a solid, moldable form.

1842 – John Cadbury begins offering French eating chocolate to the English public.

1847 – Cadbury Brothers move to larger premises in Birmingham as John Cadbury takes his brother Benjamin into partnership. John Cadbury has been roasting and grinding cocoa since 1831, he has been preparing sugar-sweetened chocolate powder and unsweetened cocoa powder and for the past 5 years he has been offering French eating chocolate.

1861 – Henri Nestle, 45, begins his rise to world prominence. The German-born Swiss businessman, who moved to the town of Vevey, Switzerland in 1843 has taken a financial interest in a local chemical firm operated by Christophe Guillaume Keppel and he assumes ownership upon Keppel’s retirement.

1866 – Henri Nestle began to build a food company based on a formula that is a combination of farinaceous pap and milk for infants who cannot take mother’s milk, under his own name.

1875 – The first milk chocolate for eating was invented at Vevey, Switzerland by the Nestle shopman in collaboration with the foreman of Daniel Peter’s Chocolate factory. They hit upon the idea of mixing sweetened condensed milk with chocolate and creating a product that meets immediate commercial success.

1875 – Swiss confectioner, Rodolphe Lindt at Bern, Switzerland developed a technique for creating fondant-chocolate smoother than any heretofore known.

1904 – Swiss General Chocolate Co. Peter Kohler, Amalgamated is created by a merger of Jean-Jacques Kohler Chocolate of Lausanne and Daniel Peter Chocolate of Vevey, Switzerland. The new firm signs a 99-year agreement giving Nestle the rights to market Peter and Kohler milk chocolate under the Nestle Trademark.

1905 – Nestle merges with its major competitor, Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co.

Article reprinted with the permission of The Cook Book Collectors of America.