810-Laucaster Farming, Saturday November 24,1984
WASHINGTON - New World
explorer Hernan Cortes was so
impressed to find Aztec Emperor
Montezuma drinking “xocoatl” out
of golden goblets that he took some
cacao beans, source of the precious
beverage, home to Spain in 1528.
Thus was born today’s
multibillion-dollar chocolate in
dustry, built on the universal
craving for the product of a
wondrous tree labeled Theobroma
“food of the gods.” That lyrical
nomenclature was furnished by
Linnaeus, the great classifier who
was known for his scientific
detachment.
Cortes, a man with his eye on a
golden doubloon, and his fellow
Spaniards took some of the miracle
beans to Trinidad, Haiti, and the
West African island of Fernando
Po, now Bioko.
CACAO LIKES IT HOT
From Fernando Po to the
mainland went one pod of beans.
Today, all the world’s cacao comes
from a dozen nations within 20
degrees of the equator, in moist,
tropical climates. Bahia state, in
eastern Brazil, and the Ivory Coast
account for 45 percent of the beans.
The Spanish nobility added cane
sugar and water to the brew in
troduced by Cortes, and heated it.
For almost a century, Spain had a
virtual monopoly on the cacao
bean market.
But word of the delectable drink
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Chocolate: food of the gods
eventually spread around Europe.
By the early 1700 s, chocolate
houses were starting to compete
with coffeehouses in London. In
1765, a chocolate factory opened in
the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In 1828, a Dutch chemist learned
to press the fatty cocoa butter out
of the beans and make cocoa
powder. In 1847, “eating
chocolate” came on the scene
when cocoa butter and sugar were
mixed with a paste of ground
beans.
The Swiss made a big
breakthrough in 1875, mixing
condensed milk with chocolate to
produce solid milk chocolate. New
machines added smoothness by
stirring, or conching, the liquid
chocolate.
Before long, an enterprising
American named Milton Hershey
became the Henry Ford of
chocolate-makers, mass-produci
ng it to make it affordable.
Today the United States leads
the world both in cacao-bean
imports and in chocolate
production. But Europeans are
bigger chocolate-eaters. The Swiss
are the biggest, with annual per
capita consumption of about 22
pounds.
IN SWEET PURSUIT
Gordon Young followed the
chocolate trail around the world,
from the tree to the table. The only
common denominator he found in
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the dozen candy factories he
visited in the United States and
Europe was automation.
Young also reports a number of
other facts about chocolate.
Among them:
—Candymakers sometimes use
other ingredients, usually
vegetable oils, in place of cocoa
butter, and the results must, by
law, be called “confectionery
coating” instead of chocolate.
—Baby Ruth candy bars, which
have such a non-chocolate coating,
didn’t get their name from the late
baseball star, but from the
youngest daughter of President
Grover Cleveland.
—Cocoa butter’s oily smoothness
and low melting point make it a
common ingredient in cosmetics
and suntan lotions.
—Chocolate itself is almost free
of salt and cholesterol. Other
ingredients in candy may not be.
Chocolate, its trade
associations assert, causes neither
acne nor cavities.
—Consumed in sufficient
quantities, it will make you fat. But
it is an excellent high-energy food
that has been eaten everywhere,
including on Mount Everest and
aboard orbiting spacecraft.
—People who touted chocolate as
an aphrodisiac in 17th-century
Europe may have had a point. It
contains small amounts of
phenylethylamine, a chemical in
the brain that, some say, increases
when folks fall in love.
Chocoholics, as Young calls
them, even have their own
magazine, Chocolate News. It is
printed with chocolate-colored and
chocolate-scented ink.
PROHIBITION LINGERS
Some of the finest chocolate
confections from Europe contain
alcohol. Therefore, by law they
can’t be imported into the United
States.
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Young declines to answer the
question that nagged him
throughout his travels; Who makes
the world’s best chocolate? The
ultimate answer, he concludes, “
lies in the taste buds of each
chocolate lover.”
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Barcelona confectioner Jose Balcells Pallares sneaks a
taste of his SVi-foot semisweet chocolate model of the Statue
of Liberty. He and an assistant spent three days of intense
craftsmanship in creating the 229-pound sculputre. How
does Pallares manage to stay so slim? By "working hard,” he
says.
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To illustrate the commitment
some chocoholics have to certain
companies, he tells the story of a
New York hostess who sent her
chauffeur to a London chocolate
maker to replace her dwindling
supply of dinner mints.
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