Chocolate

Chocolate is typically understood to mean a kind of sweet--one of the most popular in the world--made from the fermented, roasted, and ground seeds of the tropical cacao tree Theobroma cacao.

Dictionaries, very careful speakers, and candy wrappers refer to this cacao substance as "chocolate," which is an intensely flavored bitter (not sweet) food.

This is usually sweetened with sugar and other ingredients and made into chocolate bars (the substance of which is also and commonly referred to as "chocolate"), or beverages (mainly cocoa, also called "hot chocolate").

The history of chocolate

The Aztecs associated it with Xochiquetzal, the goddess of fertility.

In the New World, chocolate was consumed in a drink called xocoatl, often seasoned with vanilla,

chili pepper, and pimento.

Xocoatl was believed to fight fatigue, a belief that is probably attributable to the caffeine content.

The drink was said to be an acquired taste.

Jose de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later

16th century, wrote:

Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant to taste. Yet it is a drink very much esteemed among the Indians, where with they feast noble men who pass through their country. The Spaniards, both men and women, that are accustomed to the country, are very greedy of this Chocolaté. They say they make diverse sorts of it, some hot, some cold, and some temperate, and put therein much of that "chili"; yea, they make paste thereof, the which they say is good for the stomach and against the catarrh.

Christopher Columbus brought some cocoa beans to show Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, but it remained

for Hernando de Soto to introduce it to Europe more broadly.

The first recorded shipment of chocolate to the Old World for commercial purposes was in a shipment

from Veracruz to Seville in 1585.

It was still served as as beverage, but the Europeans added sugar to counteract the natural bitterness,

and removed the chili pepper.

By the 17th century it was a luxury item among the European nobility.

In 1828, Conrad J. van Houten patented a method for extracting the fat from cocoa beans

and making powdered cocoa and cocoa butter.

This made it possible to form the modern chocolate bar.

It is believed that Joseph Fry made the first chocolate for eating in 1849.

Chocolate as a stimulant

Chocolate is very mildly psychoactive since it contains theobromine, small quantities of anandamide,

an endogenous cannabinoid found in the brain, as well as caffeine and tryptophan.

External Links

http://www.exploratorium.edu/exploring/exploring_chocolate/

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