Originally prepared only as a drink, chocolate was served as a bitter liquid, mixed with spices or corn puree. It was believed to be an aphrodisiac and to give the drinker strength.
Originally consumed as a bitter drink, it was prized as both an aphrodisiac and an energy booster. Mankind's love affair with chocolate stretches back more than five millennia.
Chocolate's 4,000-year history began in ancient Mesoamerica, present day Mexico. It's here that the first cacao plants were found. The Olmec, one of the earliest civilizations in Latin America, were the first to turn the cacao plant into chocolate. They drank their chocolate during rituals and used it as medicine.
The first conclusive evidence we have of chocolate consumption dates from the Classic Period of the Ancient Maya of Mexico and Central America (200-900). The Maya made it into a spicy drink that they used in ceremonies and traded to people who couldn't grow their own.
The word "chocolate" is traced back to the Aztec word "xocoatl," and the name for the cacao plant, Theobroma cacao, means "food of the gods." But before chocolate became the sweet worldwide phenomenon we know today, Mesoamerican cultures made bitter drinks with the cacao bean.
As early as 500 BC, the Mayans were drinking chocolate made from ground-up cocoa seeds mixed with water, cornmeal, and chili peppers (as well as other ingredients)—a much different version from the hot chocolate we know today.
Archeologists found that the Maya Empire was the first to ferment, dry, roast, and grind cocoa beans into a paste, and then this paste or chocolate liquor was mixed with a combination of water, cornmeal, chili, and other spices like vanilla, cinnamon, and even magnolia to make a frothy chocolate beverage in 450 BCE.
So, chocolate as a drink was thought to be a hot/dry medicine, which had to be taken for cold/damp ailments. Curiously, chocolate paste was perceived as the opposite and used as a cold medicine. And the use of chocolate as a medicine was continued for many hundred years in the past for a plethora of conditions.
Death by Chocolate is book one in the Death by Chocolate series by Sally Berneathy.
The first cocoa house in England house opened in London in 1657. Cocoa beans were shipped to Europe from New Spain (Mexico), Ecuador and Venezuela. By the late 17th century, the labour force had shifted to mainly enslaved Africans.
But where did it come from? Who first thought to add chocolate and milk together? According to the Natural History Museum in Britain, that credit goes to Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish botanist. Sloane spent some time in Jamaica in the early 1700s, where the local people gave him cocoa to drink.
The first evidence of cacao use dates from approximately 5,300 years ago by the Mayo-Chinchipe civilization in Ecuador. Traces of theobromine (a chemical compound in cacao) have been found in their pottery, suggesting cacao was first used in a drink.
Ancient pottery reveals that the product we call chocolate today is almost unrecognizable when compared to the original beverage. Modern mass-market chocolate is more sugar than cacao, while chocolate's original form was the opposite.
But what we do know is that Hugo Asbach is rumoured to have created liqueur-filled chocolates in Germany in the 1920s. His creative invention came in response to women being discouraged from drinking alcohol in public as it was considered 'unladylike'.
The word “chocolate” may conjure up images of sweet candy bars and luscious truffles, but the confections of today bears little resemblance to the chocolate of the past: Throughout much of its history, chocolate was a bitter beverage, not a sweet, rich-tasting treat.
Centuries later, the Mayans praised chocolate as the drink of the gods. Mayan chocolate was a revered brew made of roasted and ground cacao seeds mixed with chilies, water and cornmeal. Mayans poured this mixture from one pot to another, creating a thick foamy beverage called “xocolatl”, meaning “bitter water.”
The Swiss eat the most chocolate in the world at 25.5 pounds per person. Europe is the largest chocolate market, with $45 billion in chocolate sales projected in 2022.
On a bad day, you might have consumed a handful of your favourite bars of chocolate, and maybe felt a little bad about it – but don't beat yourself up too much – you'd need to consume 85 bars before you'd die. Chocolate contains theobromine, which is a bitter alkaloid of the cacao plant, from which chocolate comes.
“Death By Chocolate – The fanciful name of this famous chocolate cake conjures up images of an exquisite death caused by over-indulgence. There are, however, several tales of passion and intrigue in which chocolate is the cause of death.
Theobromine is the primary alkaloid found in cocoa and chocolate.
"Chocolate is indeed a stimulant and it activates the brain in a really special way," said Stevens, a professor of psychological sciences at NAU. "It can increase brain characteristics of attention, and it also significantly affects blood pressure levels."
An ancient Toltec myth identifies Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god, as planter of the cacao trees in the tropics of southern Mexico. He was called "the god of light, the giver of the drink of the gods, chocolate." Both the Mayas and Aztecs regarded chocolate as a potent aphrodisiac.
In 1847, Joseph Fry discovered a way to mix the ingredients of cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa to manufacture a paste with a higher percentage of cocoa butter that could then be more easily molded into a solid chocolate bar. He is generally credited for the first mass-produced bar.
The History of Chocolate
There are many theories about how chocolate came to be, but the one that is most commonly accepted is that it was first discovered by the ancient Mayans. The Mayans and the Aztecs accidentally found chocolate thousands of years ago, and they used it in a bitter liquid form.