You're Dead to Me - The History of Chocolate (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: December 26, 2020

Greg Jenner is joined by chocolate historian Alex Hutchinson and British TV legend Richard Osman to explore the culinary and cultural history of chocolate.How did cacao become chocolate and find its way into our shops and hearts? A Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. All day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hiya, Greg here. Hope you're doing all right. We are making Series 3 right now. In the meantime, we've been making these Radio 4 versions of the previous episodes. We are putting them in the feed here permanently. They will be alongside the long versions. So make sure you scroll down and choose which version you want.

So you can have the shorter, punchier, swear-free versions or the long, rambling, sweary versions. So make sure you scroll down and choose which version you want. So you can have the shorter, punchier, swear-free versions or the long, rambling, sweary versions. Up to you. Thanks very much for listening. Take care. Bye. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the history podcast for everyone. For people who don't like history, people who do like history, and people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, and broadcaster, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. You might also have heard my other Radio 4 series, Homeschool History, although

that one's mostly for the kids. This show's a bit different, and today we are serving up a historical tasting menu that begins in ancient Mesoamerica and ends up in your local corner shop. And we discover all there is to know about your favourite smooth, sweet treat. It's the history of chocolate. And to help me do that, I'm joined by two delectable guests. In History Corner, she's a historian, author, broadcaster, and she was the archivist for famous chocolate companies Roundtree and Nestle for over a decade. It's all-round chocolate expert Alex Hutchinson. Hi, Alex. Hello, Greg.

Are you feeling chocolatey today? I'm always feeling chocolatey. And in Comedy Corner, he is a titan of telly, a super producer, presenter and game show guru. You'll have seen him on literally every funny panel show going. He's the Prince of Pointless. He gently quizzes child geniuses. He makes celebs look cheerfully silly on Richard Osman's House of Games. And he's also a novelist, because apparently everyone now has to write novels. Clearly I'm missing out here. It is the wonderful Richard Osman. Hi, Richard.

How are you? I'm really well, Greg. Other than I thought we were doing the history of Idris Elba, so I'm slightly disappointed. But listen, let's go with chocolate, my second favourite thing. So, what do you know? All right, so we begin with the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you at home might already know about today's subject. And obviously, it's chocolate. You know what chocolate is, you're not an idiot.

You might know that there's a sort of Aztec connection because of the famous chocolate shop Montezuma, named after an Aztec emperor. As for pop culture, there is that nice song by the 1975. You may have seen the movie Chocolat or read the novel. The movie, of course, is a bittersweet romance starring Johnny Depp. Or maybe you've seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a bittersweet romance starring Johnny Depp.

Sorry, no, that's not right. Anyway, you'll know the big-name British chocolate brands like Roundtree's, Fry's and definitely Cadbury. The history of chocolate is something we probably all know a little bit about. But how much more is there to sink our teeth into? Let's find out. Before we talk about where chocolate comes from into let's find out before we talk about where chocolate comes from let's talk about literally where it comes from richard you're a

famously clever man what do you know about the cacao plant oh what do i know about the cacao plant south american i think very bitter seed which they used to make the chocolate i think hell i absolutely got through that without any shakes of the head. That's all I got there, Alex. Alex, what do we think? So yes, South America, lovely tree, unusual in that the pods grow out of the trunk of the tree rather than off the branches. I'm getting out of town. And these pods are full of big chunky beans and pulp. And those beans are fermented and then squished and then roasted and then squished some more and then you have chocolate. And in terms of its life, we can go back to at least 5,000 years ago, 3,300 BCE in Ecuadorian,

the Mayo Chinchipe culture, which obviously we know very well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ask me everything I know about whatever the thing you just said was. It's the Maya, really, who are the first people in history that we're aware of who really can leave a little bit of evidence for us to tantalisingly get to grips with. We know a little bit about how they consumed their chocolate or their cacao. It's not yet the sort of delicious Yorkie bar we see in the shops. It's a drink, isn't it?

It is. It was bitter, but they might have added some chilli to give it a bit of spice, some honey. And it was strangely, peculiarly addictive because it contains the abromine which is an alkaloid caffeine's an alkaloid as well you presumably have tasted it in its raw form i have it here in its raw form do you want to taste it yeah here we have um some that's good radio sound effect yeah well it's coconut nibs these are bits of the broken bean this is just it in its original form. Have a sniff of that. Isn't that just the most fabulous smell?

Yeah, that's quite something. It's so potent. It's like it's got booze in it. It does. It smells a bit alcoholic, doesn't it? And the Meyer might have chucked that in some porridge, but they'd also have ground it down into a powder, mixed it with water and made a liquid drink.

And we think they had it hot. We think they had hot chocolate. We need it hot because it's got fat in it. Over 50% of the cocoa bean is cocoa butter. It's fat. So you're going to need that hot water to get it to all dissolve. The Maya, they like there to be a bit of a froth on top. I think human beings are attracted to drinks with a foam on the top. Think about it. You're flat white. Finally, someone said it. We just like bubbly things. Bubble baths. Well, yeah. Yeah, we like them. That's where white. Finally someone said it. We just like bubbly things. Bubble baths. Yeah, we like them. That's where we got the aero from.

The other thing to say about the Maya is that they considered chocolate to be valuable as an actual physical currency. Yes, but what I think is wonderful is that there is some archaeological evidence that somebody somewhere at the time was faking counterfeit cocoa

beans and they have been found left as offerings to the gods. They're traded as a commodity. They're associated with the gods. It's more to them than just they're delicious. They have a power. And did it happen there, by the way, because that plant doesn't exist elsewhere or were they the only people to work out

exactly what you could do with those pods? Funnily enough, cocoa is so difficult to grow. Yes, and it will only grow within a certain range of the equator. It doesn't like anything below 16 degrees C. Me neither. It's very, very fussy about which trees it's grown near. It can't be grown in a plantation of just cocoa trees because it's susceptible to all kinds of disease and stuff.

And the only time I know that it's ever been really, really successfully grown in England was in York in 1932, when some people at the Round Trees factory said, we've done some experiments with pineapples, we think we can grow a cocoa tree. They got a hothouse, they practised, they managed to grow one pod,

they took the beans, turned them into one tiny, tiny chocolate bar, and gave them to the Princess Elizabeth, who is now Queen. No way! That's amazing! The Queen Elizabeth II is the only person in the world to ever have eaten 100% British cocoa. That's brilliant. What an amazing fact. You then see the demise of the Maya civilisation.

The Maya carry on as people, but there's a major civilisation they end, and then you get another civilisation coming in, who are the Aztecs, and they're also into their chocolate, but they're a little different because they like their chocolate cold. Well, they're tougher, aren't they?

That's a burn, isn't it, to the Maya? Yeah. If there are any Maya listening, we do apologise. And the Aztecs were also flavouring their drinks. We've already mentioned chilli and honey and vanilla, but they also would put in flower petals. So they would use magnolia petals, and do not try this at home. There's an alkaloid in magnolia petals,

so they may have been doing it for the buzz. Oh. I'm not a magnolia historian, but they may have been doing it for the buzz. Get me a magnolia historian, Greg. Jasmine petals was something in Europe later on. But I think that the Aztecs were doing this for the buzz. But you still get rose chocolate now, don't you? And violet chocolate.

Yeah. All those artisan chocolate shops now. So they're dressing up their drinks. They're dyeing it red as well with a thing called achiote, and they also mix in gruel, the porridge-y, maize-based, it's almost kind of Cocoa Pops-y. The Spanish carried on with this. If you add cornflour to cocoa, it thickens it

and makes it less of a watery thing with fat floating on the top and a much nicer drink. The Aztecs were obviously conquered by the Spanish who came in 1519. And traditionally, people have said that Hernan Cortes, the conquistador, you might have heard of Richard, he was supposed to first bring chocolate back to Spain. Cortes the killer, right? Yeah, I mean, he wasn't the nicest of men. But there's very little evidence for this, actually, we really don't think that's true. It does arrive back in Spain in probably the 1530s. And also, the Spanish aren't

tremendously into it initially. I mean, there's a quote from Jose Acosta, who's a Jesuit missionary who's out there and he says it's loathsome having a scum of froth that is very unpleasant to taste. But it does come into Spain. And in 1545, we know that the king of Spain is presented with chocolate by Maya and Aztec priests, I think, who've been brought over. So he gets the authentic thing, the real thing. And it then comes into Spain a bit more sort of drips and draps. We know, is it Seville where they start to import it into in 1585? Is that right? Yes, that's the first record of an import.

So José Acosta may have thought that cocoa was disgusting, but we've all been to coffee shops where we've had terrible coffee. So it depends on who's making it. Yeah, but they do start adding sugar and vanilla and honey into it because they're not keen on the bitterness. So the Spanish got it before us, though? Yes, and then it spreads through Europe. Yeah, monks and friars were very big on the cocoa,

particularly because so many of them went to South America to live there and got a taste for it and also believed that it had medicinal properties. They tell their brother priests, try this. It's really good for your spleen. It's a bit good for you, isn't it, chocolate? Sometimes they say. Listen, I'm almost certain the cream maker's not good for you. But there's a certain type of chocolate that's good for you.

It's a real reaching, it's a bit good for you. I'm not kidding. The Royal Society of Chemistry have published a book on this, The History of Chocolate as a Medicine. And there is now so much research into cocoa and the things that cocoa can do for us and our health. And it's amazing. Now, scientifically speaking, the cacao plant is known as theobroma cacao.

Do you want to have a little guess about what theobroma means? Theobroma. Well, I know Theo Walcott means disappointing career. So is it a disappointing drug? Underwhelming stimulant. So theobromine. It means food of the gods. Of course it does, Theo. And that name was given to it

by a very famous 18th century naturalist called Carl Linnaeus, who is a Swedish, one of the most important people in the history of science, really, because he comes up with the whole classifications of animal species and plant species.

He calls it the food of the gods. But we also know that it is being put into other foods as well. My favourite is chocolate lasagna in Italy in the 18th century. Wow. Chocolate lasagna, of course, exists to this day as viennetta. Oh! You're right. That's a bold statement. Well, I mean, this was 18th century lasagna.

There was literally pasta in it. But of course, it's literally chocolate pasta. But you're right. I guess viennetta is a 18th century lasagna. There was literally pasta in it. But of course, it's literally chocolate pasta. But you're right. I guess a Viennetta is a sort of chocolate lasagna. So in Britain, you might get ox chalut, which would be chocolate with meat in it to fortify the invalid and the cyclist. And the cyclist.

And the cyclist. That was what the label said. It's an ox chalut to fortify the invalid and the cyclist. So it would be like chocolate with sort of Bovril in it. In England in the 1660s, we get Charles II on the throne and his dad has had a bit of an accident with an axe. This is a time of enormous political fear and tension and Charles is worried about chocolate.

He was because at the time, cocoa was the drink for intellectuals and political thinkers rather than a luxury or a frivolous. And Charles tries to close it down. He tries to close down the coffee shops and the chocolate shops, doesn't he? Isn't that funny? Just crossing the channel becomes culturally a different thing. Yeah. And we drank it completely differently.

There are some records of chocolate fortified wine. Oh, that sounds nice. Chuck some cocoa in some wine. It was also a health food drink. There were some manufacturers who were making it with Iceland moss, which is a kind of lichen. Everything about British chocolate came from just a completely

left-field perspective compared to Europe. Well, speaking of British chocolate, we need to get on, I suppose, to the more famous side of it, which is the Quakers. The fries in Bristol, the Cadburys in Birmingham, and the Round Trees in York. Alex, what is it about Quakers?

Why are they attracted to chocolate as an industry? They were attracted to grocer's shops. Right. For Quakers in Britain, for many, many years, they were restricted from going to universities, being MPs. But one thing they could do was go into business. And when they went into business, they were seen as being much more trustworthy. You could go to a Quaker and they would charge

you more money. But you knew that they were going to act with integrity. You knew that they weren't faking it because for some Quakers, they ran the risk of being thrown in prison just for being Quakers. The others all said, don't fake it, quake it. To make chocolate is so complicated. We've already talked about the cocoa nibs and the beans and the roasting. And it takes an apprenticeship. And grocers were the only people in Britain who were getting apprenticeships in how to make cocoa. So it was natural that the Quaker grocers started making drinking cocoa. And it sold so well, their businesses took off and they just made them huge.

So we get the big Quaker companies now beginning to industrialise. So how do we get the arrival of solid chocolate bars, the delicious chocolate bars that I eat on a daily basis? This is where the fries of Bristol and also Cornelius van Outen and Conrad van Outen... Not Denise van Outen. Actually, she might have been there, but as an historian, if I haven't seen evidence to disprove it, I'll always say that it's a maybe. So they change everything.

They invent a way to take these cocoa nibs and to squish them with a press that squeezes cocoa fat out of them. Here we have in a bag some cocoa butter. Oh, yes. Cocoa butter melts at body heat, so because it's in a bag, it's solid. Would you like to try to describe it, Richard? Okay. It's like a solid but crumbly. I think it's like a super tough milky bar.. I think it's like a super tough milky bar.

I would say it's like a super tough milky bar. That's how I would say it. That's how I would describe it. I'm going to say it looks delicious. Well, that's not worth eating. No? You're regretting it? Do you want to take the taste away with a coconut?

I've understood now why I've never eaten cocoa butter before. Having said that, I'm now going to try it. It's that weird thing where people are like, try this, it's awful. And you're like, all right. Oh, no. It's more, you'd get it in lush rather than hotel chocolate. Yeah, that's very soapy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm not enjoying that at all. Put it in your bath, by all means. It says it's from the soapery. There you go. We just eat soap. Imagine this. You're a Quaker.

You're making your drink in cocoa. And you've tried every which way to absorb the fat. You've added Iceland moss lichen. You've added flour, corn flour, and nothing's really mopping it up. And then along comes this delightful Dutch guy with a press that presses all the cocoa fat out of the cocoa solids and leaves you with something that's a little bit more like a powder, like the cocoa powder that we would buy from the shops to put in a chocolate cake. The cocoa fat was just a by-product, but Fry's of Bristol realised if they got some cocoa

and then added some extra cocoa butter into it with some sugar, they had suddenly made a completely new thing, which was a solid chocolate bar, and it completely changed chocolate. Ah, OK. But the guys who changed it, who invented the press, are not the guys who invented the chocolate bar. No, no. It's the guys who invented the press.

They're just doing it to make their... The Van Houtens. The Van Houtens. They're just doing it to make their drinking chocolate more dissolvable in water, more soluble. Fries are the ones who say, let's try and make an eating chocolate. And they give it a French name to make it sound fancy and posh,

which makes me suspect that possibly somebody in France had done it first they got the idea from them and that we just don't have the record so what year was this so this is like the birth of chocolate as we understand it now as we go and buy it in the newsagent it was from this moment with 1847 1847 richard do you want to have a guess what was in the cadbury fancy box well i assume that that's like a Blackmagic type chocolate assortment. All chocolate manufacturers were making fancy boxes. So that first chocolate bar's created

and then the fries work out a way of putting a fondant centre in it, a little bit like your Cadbury's cream egg which came later. Once they come up with this new technology, then suddenly everybody starts making what they call French style confections. So the others worked out fairly quickly what the fries had done.

Was it kind of obvious what they'd done? It was obvious what they'd done, but they were the ones who had the technology to do it. Up until the fries, making chocolate was something that you were doing really on the same scale as we might do in our kitchen. So roasting cocoa beans was done on a frying pan over a naked flame. Whereas they invent a cocoa roaster, they invent all kinds of steam-powered grinding machines, they industrialise it, and then Cadbury's and Roundtree's have to try to keep up. They also need some chocolate experts

because chocolate's really difficult to make and to make a success of. These chocolate bars, they had to do a thing called tempering. Well, you all know tempering. It's bake-off. They're always doing tempering, aren't they? Oh, yeah.

That's the only thing I ever learned from... I know what a sack of torta is and I know how to do tempering. Yeah, and I'm also a salsify. I know what that is. Okay, yeah, and I know how to do tempering. Yeah, and I'm also a salsify. I know what that is. Okay, yeah, because of that. But difficult back in those days. You've got to get...

This is pre-Mary Berry, just about. You've got to get those Form 5 crystals, but before you have the scientific knowledge to understand that you're trying to get Form 5 crystals. Right, yeah. Cadbury are renowned for their hot chocolate drink, and their slogan was, Absolutely pure, therefore best.

Which is a good slogan. Slightly wordy. That's nice. There's actually quite a clever way that they prove this, essentially, and they basically get the government on board to help market it. Cadbury say, look, we're going to buy this van out and press. We're going to be the first people in Britain to have it. It means we can make soluble cocoa powder by squishing the fat out with the machine.

How do we pay for it? I know. Let's make sure everybody else knows that our cocoa has no additives. They go to the government and say, everybody needs to list their ingredients. And their only ingredient is cocoa and squisher machine. That's it. What are you guys putting in yours? And the government tell round trees and fries and tailors, they have to list their ingredients.

And oh, it's embarrassing. They're not just pure. Their stuff's got other things in it. Perfectly good things. But other things. Makes it not look as good. Exactly. And we've also got the Swiss chocolatier Daniel Petter to thank for milk chocolate. And we've got Mr Henri Nestle, he invented milk powder, which then went into it as well. And we have Rudolf Lindt. So there's some names coming up here that you're going to... Isn't it amazing how the names stayed the same?

So when was the first time someone made a milk chocolate bar which presumably is when the industry we know today really took off? 1875 Daniel Peter he spent seven years trying to perfect a recipe because up until that point anytime anyone had added milk to chocolate it had just sort of curdled because it's got too much water in it and he spent ages and ages and ages finally the factory next door which was the nestle factory where they made powdered milk one of the workers suggested to one of his workers why don't you just add our milk and they had a go and that was it that was the first time milk chocolate was made a worker from a powdered milk factory is the person who invented yeah but it's chocolate we don't know that person's name i presume no and daniel peter is always credited yeah but no it was uh one of the workers working Working class hero.

Yeah. So the Swiss come up with milk chocolate. That then comes into the UK. And Cadbury's attempt to try and corner that marketplace is, of course, dairy milk. They very nearly called it something else, though. They very nearly called it dairy made. Oh, well, that's quite nice. But there was a grocer's daughter in Plymouth who said,

no, dairy milk's better. And they made it all right. Again, another of the unsung heroes. Unsung hero, yeah. That's milk chocolate. When does white chocolate come in? 19mouth who said, no, dairy milk's better. And they went, all right. Again, another of the unsung heroes. Unsung hero, yeah. That's milk chocolate. When does white chocolate come in? 1937. Oh, quite late then.

It is quite late. And it was invented as a medicine in Switzerland in the 30s. For children who'd been in hospital with a serious illness like TB or something and had lost a lot of weight, they wanted to be able to give them a vitamin-enriched milk to drink. But children rejected the milk because they said drinking milk was babyish. And so somebody said, can we make it into something that they can eat

so that they'll consume these vitamins and minerals? And someone said, well, we can whack some cocoa butter in it. Wow. And they accidentally invented white chocolate. And then this white chocolate vitamin-enriched thing, which was called Nestrovit, was so popular. the nestrovit is still available mainly on the continent this it was so popular they said you know we've got

to make this into a brand and they gave it the catch name of galak and it was going to be made in 1937 for the first time in switzerland and london respectively and the london people wrote to the swiss people and said we cannot call it Galak. It sounds wrong. No. And they said, well, what do you want to call it? Well, it's a milky bar. Isn't it amazing in the history of all these things?

You see it in the history of crisps as well. Often the very first movers and the very first bars just still exist, and they're still the one, you know. So it's not like there were 30 white chocolate bars before someone came up with the milky bar. You know, it's the milky bar, and then it remains the milky Bar for the rest of time. Well, speaking of that, actually, I've got a little list here, actually.

1920s, you've got the Cream Egg, which fries, then Cadbury's later on. The Flake, the Fruit and Nut, and the Crunchy Bar, all 1920s. I mean, but things to me like the Flake and the Crunchy, seems like things they should be inventing now. 1933, we've got an American chocolatier called Forrest Mars. Oh, yes, see see and he comes up of course with the forest bar sorry i mean the mars bar and milky way in 1935 and maltesers in 36 and then the round trees company launched the kit kat in 35 then the aero smarties in 37 but all in

that sort of that kind of 15 year period so many of the things that we still see in our news agents now it's a golden age we're all invented right yeah isn't it incredible I would say to any audience of people who are kind of my age here's a way to make money ask anyone my age

I bet you £10 you don't know what Snickers was originally called and they all go they all go okay it's Marathon they go no no no it was Snickers

it was originally Snickers named after Forrest Mars' horse this is right right and they renamed it Marathon over here in the 70s because they were pretending it was a health bar.

Oh, wow. And then they, of course, rebranded it Snickers because it's the same all over the world. But it was originally Snickers. Can we just talk a little bit about the Quakers as employers? Because famously there's a thing called garden factories or garden cities, which are not Zach Braff movies, but they are essentially communities that are built from scratch to make chocolate.

Well, the garden city and garden town movement was something that was already happening in the UK. Welling Garden City is a great example. There were lots of people at the time who said, you know, if we're going to start building somewhere for people to live, let's plan it in advance to make it nice. The Cadbury's said, well, what about factories? We could have garden factories. Let's have tennis courts, lunchtime tennis games. Cadbury's bought some

land. They built a huge factory complex and made a factory in a garden. And then they also decided to make a village or a town, which is Bourneville, and made some really, really beautiful houses and made them affordable as well. And then Roundtree said, look, go big or go home. Can we solve the problem of slums, sickness, poverty and general misery? And everybody said no. And they said, well, we're still going to try. And they set up a charity to do scientific investigations and research into the root causes of poverty and then to put all of that research into the creation of a housing estate.

And they have the village of New Earswick in York and then a whole lot of that research into the creation of a housing estate. And they have the village of New Earswick in York and then a whole lot of other villages around the country that they've started creating based on their researches because they said, well, Cadbury's might have a very nice town, but we're being scientific and we're trying to do something bigger and grander. This is all very lovely. We should bring it all down with a horrible scandal in 1908 where it was found that British companies were using cacao grown by slaves

in the Portuguese chocolate islands. Slavery had been abolished in 1833, and yet still this was being... And they were Quaker firms. Behind the scenes, the Quakers knew, and they were trying to work with people on the ground to expose it, and they were also trying to protect some people

who they knew were there at the time. There is no easy way to talk about Quakers and slavery, is there? That's the interesting thing is for us they feel oppositional. Like, Quakers are nice people who do nice things. It was a terrible scandal that had a huge impact on the Roundtree family because then they said, well, we just need to buy our own plantations and run them ourselves. And so they bought plantations and they had great ideals and they were horribly unsuccessful. And they used them to grow lemons instead.

1914, the First World War breaks out. And this is a disaster if you're trying to make dairy milk. The milk is the main issue. Oh, really? Yeah. We can get milk in the UK, can't we? But it's going to the soldiers. It's going, you know, it's the war, man.

The war. So dairy milk sort of stops getting produced because essentially the war takes over. And then into war years, you get the 20s and 30s, the golden era of all our favourite chocolate brands. And then Second World War again and it happens again. At the start of the Second World War, round trees realised that they couldn't keep making Kit Kat with milk. There were milk shortages. Milk needed to be put into powdered milk to stockpile.

And so they changed the recipe. They made a plain chocolate Kit Kat. And they wanted it to be obvious to the consumers that they knew this was different. And so it had the recipe. They made a plain chocolate Kit Kat and they wanted it to be obvious to the consumers that they knew this was different. And so it had a blue wrapper and they changed the name slightly. Before the war, Kit Kat was known as Chocolate Crisp and Kit Kat was just a nickname in the corner of the label.

And during the Second World War, they made this blue label and in big capital letters, Kit Kat, the chocolate crisp you know and love, is unavailable until after the war is over. And this is a temporary solution. And they were very, very clear about it. And it only lasted for maybe nine, ten months. And then they had to just stop altogether because in the end,

Roundtree's made munitions at their factory. And the only chocolate they made was plain chocolate for soldiers' rations. However, they were also making Riveta because the Riveta factory had moved Riveta production to York. Some of the employees missed KitKat and their children missed KitKat. So they got hold of Riveta, cut it up, got some of the old equipment to hand-make KitKats. And they hand-made KitKats with ration chocolate from the ration chocolate plant, the Rive Eater Kit Kat moulds and made plain chocolate Rive Eater Kit Kats. And still to this day, I have people come to me when I'm doing history talks to say,

why did Nestle stop making the Rive Eater Kit Kats? They're amazing. And I have to say, they didn't ever do it officially. Your parents were stealing from their employers. The nuance window! No! Parents were stealing from their employers. The nuance window!

Well, we've reached that point of the show where we need to hear from our expert. This is the famous nuance window where Richard and I, we have a break, we have a Kit Kat, and Alex takes two minutes to tell us something that we need to know. So, Alex, without much further ado, here we go. We have only scratched the surface of the history of chocolate, both on this show and as historians. There's so much we don't know and there's so much that we can still learn. New discoveries are being made all the time. For instance, until recently, we were convinced that cocoa in Mesoamerica was for noble households and warriors. And it's not only ancient history that's coming to light.

There's work to do in more recent records. So, for instance, just in the last few years, the secret Roundtree board minutes, which have been closed to the public for over 100 years, have been released to researchers. And I don't think any researchers have tried to look at them yet because I don't know that they've been released. And they're at the Borthwick Institute at the University of York. And they're full of secrets behind big brands like Kit Kat and Smarties and Aero. But there's a problem. We don't have enough chocolate historians. There aren't enough chocolate historians to dig through this material. Now, is chocolate history a worthwhile topic? Of course it is. It's now being discovered that chocolate can do for our health. There are so many huge potential benefits to human beings. For instance, there's been research in Japan that

strongly suggests that the polyphenols in cocoa work to suppress the genes which produce LDL cholesterol and activate the ones that produce HDL. So if you're a young person listening to this and you're thinking, what should I do with the rest of my life? Should I become a chocolate historian? No, no, that's ridiculous. It's not ridiculous. Join me. In fact, I need to retire at some point and there's no one to take over from me. Could you be the next chocolate historian? tire at some point and there's no one to take over from me could you be the next chocolate historian i need an army of you i'd like to offer you the opportunity to steal my job just gladly join me i need chocolate historians there's work to be done thank you so much can we get a tv show find the next chocolate historian listen can a 49 year old quiz show host apply well that was a

fantastic chat unfortunately we have run out of time. I hope you've learned loads on this whistle-stop factory tour of the history of chocolate. I feel a little bit sick from factual overindulgence. If you've enjoyed today's podcast, make sure to subscribe

to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds because the episodes there are longer, so therefore more fun. But for now, let me say a huge thank you to our brilliant guests. In History Corner, the marvellous chocolate historian, Alex Hutchinson, and in Comedy Corner, the delicious Richard Osman. But for now, I'm off to go and report Willy Wonka to the authorities. Bye!

Hello, I'm Felicity Finch. You may know me better as Ruth in The Archers. Sorry to delay the pleasure of your podcast, but I'd like a quick word in your ear. After a year like no other, many people are facing homelessness this winter. The 2020 BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields is more urgent than ever. Thank you. Christmas. Please support the BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields by donating online on the Radio 4 website. Whether you're a long-standing donor or this is your first year, thank you.