The delicious comfort of drinking chocolate is ancient and both the
Aztecs and Mayans believed cocoa to be a gift from the gods. The health benefits that are linked to the cocoa flavonoids is that the flavonoids as an antioxidants.
Chocolate was prescribed as a medicine in the 15th century to help women produce more breast milk, increase libido and improve digestion. Cocoa beans are a natural source of magnesium.Magnesium has been found to help in the following:
Theobroma Cacao is the official scientific name given to cacao by Swedish Botanist Carolus Linnaeus in the 18 th century. The word Theobroma comes from the Greek language literally meaning, 'food of the gods.' Cocoa played a very important part in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. While the exact origin of cocoa is still debated, it said to have been introduced by the ancient Maya to Central America from the South American highlands of the Amazon and Orinoco basins. The word for cacao (cocoa in Spanishi) is thought to have been created by the Olmec Indians whom historical linguistical investigations indicate may have been using the term around 1000 BC Mayan Indians were the first to create a beverage from cocoa. The Aztecs had their own drink as well, and reserved cocoa consumption for warriors and nobility. They used cocoa for nutritional purposes, but also as a form of currency. There was much emphasis placed on the importance and sanctity of cocoa. Their drink was spicy and bitter, made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that they turned into a paste. This was then mixed with water and maize, and flavored with chilies, then beat into froth. The drink was called 'xocoatl' (pronounced 'shoco-latle'). The drink was served in solid gold goblets to the Aztec ruler Montezuma and his court. The cups would be used only once before being tossed into the lake. Hernán Cortés later introduced Xocoatl to Spain . The cocoa drink was not well received at first, but once sugar began to be added to it, it quickly became a popular drink with the Spanish courts. From there cocoa's popularity rose and demand for it was high. Europeans began planting cacao in the Caribbean and South America .  |
cocoa has been described as a medicine for many
ailments. Chocolate is made from a tropical tree called the cacao - the word 'cocoa' is simply a spelling mistake which stuck! These trees flourish in warm, moist climates, mainly in the Caribbean,Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. Long before the African trade, the Aztec ruler Montezuma got the credit for being the original chocaholic, but the story goes back further. The word 'cacao' is central-American Mayan, and there is pottery dated 500AD which carries the word. The London chocolate company Montezuma (it’s the same king’s name) says "leaves hot chocolate unchallenged as the world's oldest non-alcoholic beverage". When Cortez explored the area, one of his officers counted Montezuma drinking 50 flagons of 'chocolatl' every day. The 'choco' part means 'foam', and 'atl' is water. Similar to the modern beverage, in that way. But not in taste. This beverage, which was sometimes made with wine or water, could be seasoned with vanilla, pimiento… or chilli pepper, which rather predates the similar Espresso Warehouse product. The king said it cured diarrhoea and dysentery, and was also an aphrodisiac -but then he did have a harem to take care of. Cortez found it too bitter, but he did write home to King Carlos the first of Spain, talking about it. (One story says Christopher Columbus may have found it first, but completely missed its importance; Columbus fans say he brought it back, but the king didn't like it!) Although Montezuma's kingdom was very advanced in many ways, there was also human sacrifice - in one ceremony, the human heart was replaced by a cocoa pod. Montezuma himself later got stoned - not on any variation of his drink, but executed by his followers, who had discovered that the Spanish were really after their land, not just the chocolate. In 1544, a delegation of Dominican friars went to Spain and presented the king with 'containers of chocolate, ‘frothed and ready to drink' - the first instant hot chocolate! The Spaniards added cane sugar and vanilla, and introduced the molinillo, a wooden whisk-like tool that is twirled between the palms of the hands to mix the chocolate and create a foam. The British were slow to cotton on. In 1579, one pirate ship captured an entire and valuable shipload of cacao beans, and burned the lot,thinking they were sheep droppings. (Why the Spanish were thought to be shipping sheep manure, nobody has explained!) Chocolate eventually arrived here at more or less the same time as coffee and tea. It was still thought of just as a drink until in America, two guys used an old mill to grind cocoa beans into chocolate liquor, which they pressed into cakes meant to be made into drinking chocolate. Coenraad Van Houten of Amsterdam took this up, and invented a way of removing half the cocoa butter from the liquor, which reduced the fat content, and making a hard cake which could be turned into powder. Then a Quaker chap called Fry discovered a way to mix some of the melted cacao butter back into cocoa powder along with sugar to create a paste, not for dissolving into a drink, but to put into a mould. This was the first chocolate bar. Another Quaker, John Cadbury, opened a grocery shop where he roasted and ground his own cacao beans,and marketed the first box of chocolate candies in 1868. A Swiss chocolate maker called Daniel Peter tried to create a chocolate bar flavoured with milk, but he couldn't manage to produce a smooth enough mixture, until he met a guy who had invented milk which could be stored and reconstituted - this was condensed milk, the inventor was Henri Nestlé, and that was the milk chocolate bar. Rudolph Lindt invented a finer paste then before, and those names still survive (except poor Mr. Peter). Also unknown is Ruth Wakefield, who one day in 1930 ran out of the baking chocolate she used to make biscuits. She improvised by chopping up a semi-sweet Nestlé's bar and stirring the chunks into the dough, thinking they would melt. They didn't - but she had invented the choc-chip cookie. Montezuma said chocolate was an aphrodisiac . |
