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   Introduction: Eating and Using ChocolateChocolate as a Food We tend to think of chocolate as a rich, creamy food—a favorite ingredient in many dishes and a luscious indulgence in its own right. But until recently in fact, (for 90% of its history), people drank chocolate; they didn’t eat it.  Peoples of Mesoamerica liked their chocolate drink frothy and spicy.The Classic Period Maya (250-900 C.E. [A.D.]) and Aztecs (1250-1521) were early connoisseurs of chocolate’s flavorful properties. They made chocolate by mixing crushed cacao seeds with water. The result was a tepid, foamy, and quite bitter beverage. The Aztec people spiced their drink with chile peppers, thickened it with cornmeal, or flavored it with honey, vanilla, or flower petals. Sugar wasn’t yet available as a sweetener in the Americas. Europeans liked their chocolate drink sweet and hot. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, they found the native chocolate drink too bitter for their tastes. To sweeten and flavor it, the Spanish added sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, and other spices. The Spanish managed to keep their delicious drink a secret from others for almost 100 years. But eventually versions of the brew spread like wildfire throughout Europe, becoming the popular drink of the continent’s rich and elite.  Today, people worldwide love sweetened chocolate as a drink and as a food.During the mid-1800s, new machines made it possible to inexpensively mass-produce solid chocolate candy. No longer a rich person’s treat, chocolate became affordable to a much wider audience. Today, chefs in many countries have incorporated chocolate into specialty dishes, desserts, and drinks so that this sweet can now be found in some form on most menus around the world. Continue to The Symbolism of Cacao and Chocolate |
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