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Idea of Single-Origin Chocolate goes back at least to
the Aztecs:
Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún compiled a
monumental account of the Aztecs in their own language and
translated it into Spanish. From his descriptions we can see
that the Mexican peoples were informed connoisseurs of
cacao and chocolate. His accounts make it clear that
shoppers in the Aztec marketplace were knowledgeable and
choosy about the beans shipped to them from the cacao
growing territory. They paid for quality.
When the Spanish colonists began their chocolate
experiments within about a generation after Cortes, they
continued to observe these crucial distinctions and to judge
chocolate on the basis of nuances in the different original
cacaos it was made from. Later they would attach names
like cacao dulce, or cacao blanco to the whole complex of
superior cacaos that they had found being grown in
Mesoamerica and later in Venezuela. But the name that
would endure was Criollo, or ‘born in the new world’.
Maricel Presilla ~ The New Taste of Chocolate
Theobroma Cacao: Food of the Gods
This is the name given by Carl von Linné, (Linneuas), in
categorizing the plant that had been enjoyed, traded far and
wide, used as currency, and offered to the gods for hundreds,
nay thousands, of years in Central America.
Throughout most of the long history of Chocolate, which
stretches back to at least 1800 BCE, cacao was taken not as
food, but as drink. Resembling our Hot Chocolate somewhat,
but of course made from whole beans rather than cocoa
powder.
Cacao pods containing beans inside a white pulp, were likely
used as a fruit for the pulp, or the pulp allowed to ferment and
turned into something of a chocolate beer, long before the
process of turning the beans into the frothy chocolate drink
was known.
Several steps must be taken in order to transform the bitter
and astringent beans into something so vastly different and
wonderful that it has come to be highly regarded, even
revered by so many.
Beans and pulp are removed from the pod and the pulp
allowed to ferment for several days. This kills the seeds and
begins changing compounds inside them, from bitter and
acrid to smooth and tasty.
More days in the sun dry the beans. They are then roasted,
winnowed and ground. The Mesoamericans used a metate, a
stone slab and roller, to grind the beans into a paste. Then
the paste was added to water, hot (Mayan) or cold (Aztec),
and frothed by pouring it back and forth between two vessels.
Most of the Mesoamericans took their drinks with many
flavorings: hot chilies, flower petals, achiote, honey, maguey
sap, vanilla.
The Spanish did not like the drink at first but when they added
sugar, cinnamon, anise seed, black pepper rather than the
hot chilli peppers, it did ultimately catch on.
Chocolate preparation did not change essentially from the
introduction of the Molinillo by the Spanish, an easier method
of mixing and frothing the drink, until the Industrial Revolution.
