Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Chocolate (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. Around 3,500 years ago, the people of Central America discovered something marvelous. The cacao bean could be used to create a fermented beverage that was unlike anything they had ever experienced. For centuries, the cacao bean became so important in that part of the world that it was actually used as money. Eventually, the bean was taken from the Americas to Europe, where it was radically transformed. Learn more about the history of chocolate and how the sweet tree we know today developed from something. completely different on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:54 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. The history of chocolate begins with the cacao plant. The history and origin of the cacao plant have been very difficult to determine, because once it was domesticated, it spread rapidly through South and Central America. The current best guess that researchers have is that the cacao plant originally came from somewhere in the Amazon basin.

Starting point is 00:01:35 The scientific name for the plant is Theobroma cacao. It's a large oblong fruit, and inside there is a white, fleshy pulp. It's believed that the first use of the cacao plant was its consumption as a fruit. Inside the fruit, as with pretty much all fruits, is a dark seed, which is often called a bean. The plant was probably domesticated about 5,300 years ago, somewhere in the Amazon. However, it spread quickly after that, which is one of the reasons why it's been so difficult to pin down the location of its origin. The cacao plant has a rather narrow range of latitudes where it can live, about 20 degrees north or south of the equator. And one of the places where it thrived was Central America.

Starting point is 00:02:17 About 4,000 years ago, the Olmec civilization began cultivating cacao in the region. And about 2,500 years ago, the Mayan civilization made a discovery that completely changed the value of the plant. The Mayans created a drink known as Chocolatol, or rather we know it as Chocolatel, but they may have called it something else. More on that in a bit. And as you can probably guess, Chocolatel is the origin of the word chocolate. The cacao plant was extremely important to the Mayans. It was widely cultivated and used by people at every level of society. The drink they developed was a fermented alcoholic beverage made from the beans with chilies added for taste. It was consumed at important events such as festivals, celebrations, and religious ceremonies.

Starting point is 00:03:01 The beans became so important that they were used as a form of currency, and everything from wives to tools was priced in cacao beans. If you're imagining people sipping a cup of hot chocolate, that is not what this drink would have tasted like. It was probably very bitter, which is why hot chilies were added to it for taste. When the Aztecs arose in Mexico, they too developed the love of Chocolatol. In fact, it's from the Aztecs where we get the word. Chocolatol literally means bitter water. Unlike the Mayans, Chocolatel was only reserved for the elite in Aztec society. The cacao plant couldn't be cultivated in most of the Aztec lands in central Mexico, so it couldn't be as widely consumed as it was in Mayan civilization. Like the Mayans, the Aztecs held a plant at high

Starting point is 00:03:48 esteem and thought the cacao plant was a gift from the god Ketsiquotl. Hernan Cortez reported that the Aztec emperor Montezuma II would drink nothing but chocolate. His drink would often be flavored with another seed native to Mexico, vanilla. It was through the Aztecs that the cacao bean, and we will just be talking about the beans from here on out, came in contact with Europeans. Before I get into what the Europeans did with the bean, I should explain some of the differences between cacao and cocoa. If you read up on the subject, you'll find the term cacao and cocoa used interchangeably. However, there is a technical difference. The raw bean from the plant is usually referred to as cacao. If the bean is roasted and the fat pressed

Starting point is 00:04:32 out of the bean, the powder that remains is usually called cocoa. Some people will call different levels of bean processing different things, so the division between cacao and cocoa can vary, and it's often just a matter of marketing. The first European contact with the cacao plant occurred in 1502 during the fourth voyage of Columbus when he finally reached the Central American mainland. He brought back the beans to Spain, but nothing became of them because nobody knew how to process them. The expeditions of Hernan Cortez in Mexico realized exactly what those beans could do. He and his men, particularly the Jesuit priests, brought back not just beans, but the recipe for chocolate to Spain in 1544. In Spain, it was used as a medicine,

Starting point is 00:05:15 but it still had the bitter taste that it did back in the Americas. Then they added something to the beverage to remove this bitter taste to make it more palatable. They sweetened it. This new sweetened chocolate, and it was still a drink at this point, was a hit at the Spanish Troil Court in the late 16th century. The secret of chocolate was limited to Spain and Portugal for almost 100 years until the middle of the 17th century. An Italian by the name of Antonio Carletti learned about chocolate in Spain and brought it back with him to Italy. It quickly spread in Italy and then was exported to Austria and Germany. As word of this new chocolate spread, demand for cacao beans to make it dramatically increased. This resulted in Europeans operating cacao plantations

Starting point is 00:05:59 in the Americas, which were almost all run by slaves. It was complementary to the sugar plantations, which were also being run in the Americas. Europeans began to create their own chocolate recipes, using ingredients they were familiar with. They added sugar, honey, cinnamon, milk, cream, and dried fruit. While there was a great deal of demand for chocolate in Europe, it was tempered by its high cost. It was a luxury good, and at this point it was still just a beverage. The reason why it remained so expensive had to do with the cost of processing it. For the most part, in the early 18th century, it still all had to be done by hand. The first mechanical cocoa grinder was developed in 1729 by the English inventor Walter Churchman.

Starting point is 00:06:41 His water-powered grinder could both grind the beans and separate the bean from the husk, and dramatically increased the amount of cocoa that could be processed. In 1732, French chocolatiers discovered that heating grinders could improve the extraction of cocoa. Dedicated companies began to spring up in the mid-18th century, that were dedicated solely to the production of chocolate. One of the biggest advances in the mass production of cocoa was developed in 1815 by the Dutch chemist Conrad Van Houghton. He developed a process by adding alkalide salts to the acidic cocoa powder to create a more neutral tasting, less bitter chocolate. This process became known as the Dutch process, and it's still used today.

Starting point is 00:07:22 In 1828, Van Houtten created a press to extract the fat, known as cocoa butter from the beans. This reduced the processing cost and made the end product more consistent. All of these innovations led to the creation of the thing which really made chocolate come into its own. The thing that you probably think of first when you think of chocolate. In 1848, the British company J.S. Fryen Sons had a breakthrough when they mixed cocoa butter back in to the cocoa powder, making it malleable. They created the first solid chocolate bar. Milk had been added to chocolate drinks ever since it arrived in Europe, but in 1875, the Swiss chocolate maker, Daniel Peter,

Starting point is 00:08:04 took advantage of a new invention called powdered milk to make a new form of chocolate called milk chocolate. He later joined with his friend, the Swiss businessman, Honorie Nestle, to create mass-produced milk chocolate. The late 19th and early 20th century saw the creation of many chocolate companies which are still very popular today. These include Cadbury, Nestle, Hershey, Lint, Mars, Toblerone, Godiva, and Geraldi.

Starting point is 00:08:28 As demand for chocolate increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the production of cacao shifted from the Americas to West Africa. Today, three of the top four cacao-producing countries in the world are the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Nigeria. In 1937, the Nestle Corporation released a new product known as white chocolate. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, but it doesn't have any cocoa solids. In addition to cocoa butter, it usually contains, milk, sugar, and vanilla. The creation of solid chocolate radically changed what you could do with chocolate.

Starting point is 00:09:01 The chocolate bar was just the beginning. Chocolate coated or chocolate dip products were made, usually with nuts or fruit. In 1900, the Hershey Company created a small piece of chocolate that they called a kiss, which could be sold for a much cheaper price than a whole chocolate bar. In the 1920s, chocolate in the shape of a bunny became popular during Easter, and in 1963, three, the first chocolate eggs were sold, which were later taken over by the Cadbury Corporation. More and more varieties of chocolate developed with different properties. These included chocolates with high cacao content that's more bitter, chocolate with lower melting points, and even infused chocolates.

Starting point is 00:09:38 This allowed chocolate to become a medium-for sculpting. If you've ever watched any TV food programs, there's a good chance you might have seen some of these competitions. Extremely elaborate, edible, and sometimes fragile sculptures are made out of chocolate. And if you ever watch a period television show or a movie that shows some king with a chocolate sculpture, it is not historically accurate. Chocolate is now a big business. The total global market for chocolate was $125 billion in 2020, and it's estimated to reach $177 billion by the year 2027.

Starting point is 00:10:13 It currently takes about 400 cacao beans to make one pound of chocolate, and a single cacao tree can produce enough beans to make one to three pounds of chocolate every. every year. The world's largest chocolate-consuming country by far is Switzerland, which consumes 19.4 pounds or 8.8 kilograms of chocolate per person per year. It's hard to imagine a world without chocolate. Despite its very ancient roots with the people of South and Central America, what we consider chocolate as a solid food you can eat is actually a rather recent invention. The relationship many people have with chocolate can best be summarized by the late cartoonist Charles Schultz, who said, quote, all you need is love, but a little chocolate now and then

Starting point is 00:10:56 doesn't hurt. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified of future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Chocolate (Encore)

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