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Chocolate begins with a bean ...
a cacao bean. It has been mashed and eaten for centuries. The history of chocolate spans
from 200 B.C. to the present
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The Mayan Indians worshiped the
cacao bean as an idol over 2,000 years ago.
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1519, Hernando Cortez tasted
"Cacahuatt," a drink enjoyed by Montezuma II, the last Aztec emperor. He brought
the beans back to Spain where the chocolate drink was made and then heated with added
sweeteners. Its formula was kept a secret to be enjoyed by nobility.
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In the mid-1600s, one
enterprising Frenchman opened the first hot chocolate shop in London. By the 1700s,
chocolate houses were as prominent as coffee houses in England.
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In 1765 in the Massachusetts Bay
the New World's first chocolate factory opens
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In 1876, Daniel Peter, a Swiss
candy maker, developed milk chocolate by adding condensed milk to chocolate liquor - the
nonalcoholic by-product of the cocoa bean's inner meat. The Swiss also gave the chocolate
a smoother texture through a process called "conching." |
