Chocolate

The history of chocolate began in Latin America, where cacao trees grow wild. The first people to have used chocolate were probably the Olmec who once lived in this area of today’s southeast Mexico. They lived in that area around 1000 BC, and their word, “kakawa,” gave us our word “cacao.”  But, that's about all we know for sure. We don't know how (or even if) the Olmec actually used chocolate but the reason we strongly suspect that they did is based upon the customs and actions of the Maya (they are though to have picked up where the Olmec left off) that showed up in the same area about a thousand years later (from about 250-900 AD).  They did use chocolate, and allot. In fact you could say that chocolate’s history began with the Maya.

To the Maya, chocolate symbolized life, fertility, health, and royalty. They created a drink made from the beans of the cacao tree, but since they didn’t have sugar, they were quite creative in finding ways for flavoring their water based chocolate drinks (they never developed the bar or solid chocolate), by using all kinds of spices (such as hot chili peppers!).

In addition the cacao bean was held in such high regard by the Maya, they regularly used the beans as a form of currency. Ten (10) beans would buy you a nice rabbit for dinner or in the alternative to eating, an evening with a prostitute. One Hundred (100) beans would buy you a slave.  Evidence suggests that some clever person came up with a way to counterfeit the cacao bean by carving them out of clay. The beans continued to be used as currency in parts of Latin America until the 19th century! There was even a time in Europe when a hundred (100) such beans would buy you a small hen or a rabbit but by the 18^th century this chocolate currency was a thing of the past, at least in Europe.  

It's no big surprise that when the Aztecs conquered the Maya, they kept this chocolate tradition alive. From about 1200-1500, the Aztecs dominated the region and continued using cacao beans as a refreshing drink base as well as a strong currency.

In 1502, Chris Columbus and his son, Ferdinand, were in the area, conquering and such no doubt, when they happened upon a dugout canoe filled with supplies which they promptly captured. During the process of transferring the supplies to their ship, someone spilled some cacao beans, and the natives ran for the beans “as if an eye had fallen from their heads,” as Ferdinand later told it. Columbus missed his chance to also be known as the first European to “discover” chocolate, but his opportunity to make chocolate history was missed because he considered the incident insignificant.

When Cortez and his associates arrived in the Aztec capital in 1519, cacao trading was in full force, and Montezuma, the Aztec ruler, was rumored to have a billion beans or so in storage. Cortez and company soon tried the chocolate drink, and hated it; one writer eloquently called it “more a drink for pigs than a drink for humanity.” You see, without sugar, cacao is quite bitter.

After Cortez and pals conquered the Aztecs, they continued to use cacao beans as currency, but by this time a rabbit cost 30 beans due to inflation no doubt. But chocolate history would soon change forever, because someone in the Cortez group figured out that if you added sugar to the cocoa drink it was quite tasty indeed. As a result in 1528 it was shipped to Spain.

For a while, the Spaniards kept the chocolate secret.  In fact, it was considered a health food and a medicine. Spanish doctors often prescribed it for curing fevers, cooling the body, aiding in digestion, and alleviating or easing pain. The Catholic Church approved it as a nutritional supplement to take while fasting but for whatever reason, the Catholic Church many years later decided that while drinking chocolate didn’t constitute a sin, eating it did. However, they soon thereafter reversed this unfavorable decision.

Chocolate soon made its way to the rest of Europe and the world. By 1657, the first chocolate house opened in London, England; there you could go to the chocolate house, and with 10 or 15 Shillings you could have a chocolate drink, play some cards, talk a little politics, or just hang out. Since chocolate was the first caffeine product to reach Europe, beating out tea and coffee by a few years, such places were soon almost as popular as pubs.

Then sometime during the 1850s, an Englishman named Joseph Fry changed life for all chocolate lovers, past and present, by adding more cocoa butter, rather than hot water to cocoa powder and sugar; as a result the world's first solid chocolate bar was born.

In 1875, Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle (both from Switzerland) added condensed milk to the mix, thus creating a milk chocolate bar and by 1889 the two established the Nestle Company.  By 1907, yet another famous chocolate king pin, Milton Hershey, had a U S factory plucking out 33 million Hershey Kisses a day.

Sources ...

http://www.5starchocolates.com/history/                                                                               http://www.facts-about-chocolate.com/chocolate-history.html                  http://www.extremechocolate.com/strange-facts-in-chocolate-history.html             http://us.fotolia.com/id/17988229&utm_source=affiliation&utm_medium=affiliation&utm_content=54083                                                                           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Peter