Executive Chef's News

CHOCOLATE

Candy bars, milk snacks, cookies, flavored coffee, cereal, and even medicine! Chocolate is a key ingredient in many foods. In fact, it ranks as the favorite flavor for many Americans.

The story of chocolate goes as far back as 1500 BC to the South American rain forests when the cacao (kah KOW) tree was first discovered. (The seeds plants are used to make chocolate and are referred to as beans.) The earliest evidence of chocolate residue was found on several jars in Honduras.

Cacao beans quickly became a type of currency. You could buy one turkey for ten cacao beans or a fresh avocado for three beans.

South Americans and some European cultures also have used cacao for medicinal purposes such as diarrhea and low energy.

The time line of chocolate goes as follows:

1500 BC-400 BC
The Olmec Indians are believed to be the first to grow cocoa beans as a domestic crop.

250 to 900 CE
The consumption of cocoa beans was restricted to the Mayan society's elite, in the form of an unsweetened cocoa drink made from the ground beans.

AD 600
Mayans migrate into northern regions of South America establishing earliest known cocoa plantations in the Yucatan.

14th Century
The drink became popular among the Aztec upper classes who seized the cocoa beverage from the Mayans and were the first to tax the beans. The Aztecs called it "xocalatl" meaning warm or bitter liquid.

1502
Columbus encountered a great Mayan trading canoe in Guanaja carrying cocoa beans as cargo.

1519
Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez recorded the cocoa usage in the court of Emperor Montezuma.
 
1544
Dominican friars took a delegation of Kekchi Mayan nobles to visit Prince Philip of Spain. The Mayans brought gift jars of beaten cocoa, mixed and ready to drink. Spain and Portugal did not export the beloved drink to the rest of Europe for nearly a century.

16th Century Europe
The Spanish began to add cane sugar and flavorings such as vanilla to their sweet cocoa beverages.

1570
Cocoa gained popularity as a medicine and aphrodisiac.

1585
First official shipments of cocoa beans began arriving in Seville from Vera Cruz, Mexico.

1657
The first chocolate house was opened in London by a Frenchman. The shop was called The Coffee Mill and Tobacco Roll. Costing 10 to 15 shillings per pound, chocolate was considered a beverage for the elite class.

1674
Eating solid chocolate was introduced in the form of chocolate rolls and cakes, served in chocolate emporiums.

1730
Cocoa beans had dropped in price from $3 per lb. to being within the financial reach of those other than the very wealthy.

1732
French inventor, Monsieur Dubuisson invented a table mill for grinding cocoa beans.

1753
Swedish naturalist, Carolus Linnaeus was dissatisfied with the word "cocoa," so renamed it "theobroma," Greek for "food of the gods."

1765
Chocolate was introduced to the United States when Irish chocolate-maker John Hanan imported cocoa beans from the West Indies into Dorchester, Massachusetts, to refine them with the help of American Dr. James Baker. The pair soon after built America's first chocolate mill and by 1780, the mill was making the famous BAKER'S ® chocolate.

1795
Dr. Joseph Fry of Bristol, England, employed a steam engine for grinding cocoa beans, an invention that led to the manufacture of chocolate on a large factory scale.

1800
Antoine Brutus Menier built the first industrial manufacturing facility for chocolate.

1819
The pioneer of Swiss chocolate-making, François Louis Callier, opened the first swiss chocolate factory.

1828
The invention of the cocoa press, by Conrad Van Houten, helped cut prices and improve the quality of chocolate by squeezing out some of the cocoa butter and giving the beverage a smoother consistency. Conrad Van Houten patented his invention in Amsterdam and his alkalizing process became known as "Dutching". Several years earlier, Van Houten was the first to add alkaline salts to powdered cocoa to make it mix better with water.

1830
A form of solid eating chocolate was developed by Joseph Fry & Sons, a British chocolate maker.

1847
Joseph Fry & Son discovered a way to mix some of the cocoa butter back into the "Dutched" chocolate, and added sugar, creating a paste that could be molded. The result was the first modern chocolate bar.

1849
Joseph Fry & Son and Cadbury Brothers displayed chocolates for eating at an exhibition in Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England.

1851
Prince Albert's Exposition in London was the first time that Americans were introduced to bonbons, chocolate creams, hand candies (called "boiled sweets"), and caramels.

1861
Richard Cadbury created the first known heart-shaped candy box for Valentine's Day.

1868
John Cadbury mass-marketed the first boxes of chocolate candies.

1876
Daniel Peter of Vevey, Switzerland, experimented for eight years before finally inventing a means of making milk chocolate for eating.

1879
Daniel Peter and Henri Nestlé joined together to form the Nestlé Company.

1879
Rodolphe Lindt of Berne, Switzerland, produced a more smooth and creamy chocolate that melted on the tongue. He invented the "conching" machine. To conch meant to heat and roll chocolate in order to refine it. After chocolate had been conched for seventy-two hours and had more cocoa butter added to it, it was possible to create chocolate "fondant" and other creamy forms of chocolate.

1894
Milton Hershey started producing sweet chocolate to cover his caramels.
1897
The first known published recipe for chocolate brownies appeared in the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue.

1910
Canadian, Arthur Ganong marketed the first nickel chocolate bar. William Cadbury urged several English and American companies to join him in refusing to buy cacao beans from plantations with poor labor conditions.

1913
Swiss confiseur Jules Sechaud of Montreux introduced a machine process for manufacturing filled chocolates.

1926
Belgian chocolatier, Joseph Draps starts the Godiva Company to compete with Hershey's and Nestle's American market.