Hot Chocolate - Wikipedia

Further information: History of chocolate

 

Archaeologists have found evidence that Mayan chocolate consumption occurred as early as 500 BC, and there is speculation that chocolate predates even the Mayans.[4] To make the chocolate drink, which was served cold, the Maya ground cocoa seeds into a paste and mixed it with water, cornmeal, chili peppers, and other ingredients.[9] They then poured the drink back and forth from a cup to a pot until a thick foam developed.[4] Chocolate was available to Maya of all social classes, although the wealthy drank chocolate from "large spouted vessels" that were often buried with elites.[4] An early Classic period (460–480 AD) Mayan tomb from the site of Rio Azul, Guatemala, had vessels with the Maya glyph for cacao on them with residue of a chocolate drink.[9][10]

Because sugar was yet to come to the Americas,[9] chocolate was said to be an acquired taste. Chocolate was then a drink consisting of a chocolate base flavored with vanilla and other spices that was served cold.[11][12] The drink tasted spicy and bitter as opposed to sweetened modern hot chocolate,[9] and José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later 16th century, described chocolate as:

Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant 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 Chocolate. 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.[13]

Within Mesoamerica many drinks were made from cacao beans, and further enhanced by flowers like vanilla to add flavor.[14] This was a tribute to the Aztecs. The Aztecs, or Mexica, required conquered people to provide them with chocolate. Cups, gourds, cacao beans, as well as other things they acquired were listed in The Essential Codex Mendoza.[15] Cacao became used as a currency throughout Mesoamerica.[14] The Aztecs used chocolate to show high status: it was a bad omen for someone low or common to drink chocolate.[14]

European adaptation

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Europeans' first recorded contact with chocolate was not until 1502 on Columbus's fourth voyage.[14] After its introduction to Europe, the drink slowly gained popularity. The imperial court of Emperor Charles V soon adopted the drink, and chocolate became a fashionable drink popular with the Spanish upper class. Additionally, cocoa was given as a dowry when members of the Spanish royal family married other European aristocrats.[16] At the time, chocolate was very expensive in Europe because the cocoa beans only grew in South America.[17]

Sweet-tasting hot chocolate was then invented, leading hot chocolate to become a luxury item among the European nobility by the 17th century.[18] Even when the first Chocolate House (an establishment similar to a modern coffee shop)[9] opened in 1657, chocolate was still very expensive, costing 50 to 75 pence (approximately 10–15 shillings) a pound (roughly £45–65 in 2016).[19][20] At the time, hot chocolate was often mixed with spices for flavor; one notable recipe was hot chocolate "infused with fresh jasmine flowers, amber, musk, vanilla and ambergris."[18] In the late 17th century, Sir Hans Sloane, president of the Royal College of Physicians, visited Jamaica, where he was introduced to cocoa. He found it 'nauseous' but by mixing it with milk made it more palatable. When Sloane returned to England, he brought the recipe with him, introducing milk chocolate to England.[21] The aristocratic nature of the drink led to chocolate being referred to as "the drink of the gods" in 1797.[18]

The Spanish began to use jicaras made of porcelain in place of the hollowed gourds used by the natives.[14] They then further tinkered with the recipes by using spices such as cinnamon, black pepper, anise, and sesame. Many of these things were used to try to recreate the flavor of the native flowers which they could not easily acquire.[14] Black pepper was used to replace chillies and mecaxochitl, cinnamon was used in place of orejuelas, sugar replaced honey.[14]

In 1828, Coenraad Johannes van Houten developed the first cocoa powder-producing machine in the Netherlands.[9][22] The press separated the greasy cocoa butter from cacao seeds, leaving a purer chocolate powder behind.[9] This powder was easier to stir into milk and water. By using cocoa powder and low amounts of cocoa butter, it was also possible to manufacture chocolate bars. The term chocolate then came to mean solid chocolate rather than hot chocolate, with the first chocolate bar being created in 1847.[23]

According to tradition, the Italian version cioccolata calda was first born in Turin around 1560: to celebrate that the capital of the Duchy of Savoy was moved from Chambéry to Turin, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy asked for a new beverage, and so this thicker, creamy version was created.[24]