A Quick History of Chocolate

On Christopher Columbus’s last trip to the New World still looking for a route to Asia, he caught his the Old World’s first glimpse at chocolate. Of course at the time Columbus thought they were almonds and noticed that traders valued it very highly. Columbus thought nothing of them and left for Panama before his death in 1506. Columbus never found that passage to Asia nor did he ever taste those “almonds” that were actually cacao beans.

Cacao plants can be traced back to Mayan times in 600 A.D. The Mayans drank a hot beverage called “chocol haa” by mixing the beans with hot water, vanilla, hot chili powder, and other spices. By 1000 A.D. cacao beans were so popular they were used as forms of currency.

The first European thought to have tasted chocolate was conquistador Hernan Cortes in 1519 in a ceremony with the Aztecs. At first, it took a while for Europeans to get used to this new taste. Jose de Acosta described chocolate as “scum-like” and that it “disgusts those who are not used to it”. Italian historian Girolamo Benzoni wrote about his experience as “bitter”. Still some found a use for this new product. Chocolate was boasted for its medicinal value and one advocate claimed that “he who drinks a cup of this liquid, no matter how far he walks, can go a whole day without eating anything else.” That man’s mother should have told him that that would spoil his appetite. Spain took a fondness to chocolate which they liked served in a hot drink they called “cacahuatl”. The name was eventually changed to “chocolatl” combining the Mayan word for hot and Aztec word for water.

By the late 1600s, chocolate was a popular drink among the aristocracy, bringing in heavy tax revenues for royalty but Europeans begin to experiment cooking it. From this emerged French chocolate biscuits and chocolate cakes from Spain. Italy even tried making chocolate soup, liver, and pasta.

The chocolate revolution began in 1828, when Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes Van Houten (great grandfather of Milhouse) invented a hydraulic press that could separate cacao butter from ground up cacao beans. The remains were then ground into what is now known as cacao powder. The first man to figure out how to make chocolate into molds was Francis Fry who sold under the name “Chocolat Delicieux a Manger” or Delicious Chocolate for Eating”. Swiss chemist Henri Nestle was the first make powdered milk and later combined the powdered milk with chocolate for the world’s first chocolate milk. He also brought us the Crunch bar.

The last man in the story of chocolate is Milton Snavely Hershey. Hershey once owned the world’s largest caramel factory but gave it all up to focus on building a chocolate empire. Hershey used the principles of mass production and planned to create the world’s largest chocolate factory. He bought thousands of acres of farmland to supply enough milk and built a town in Pennsylvania just to house the enormous workforce

at the factory. Hershey spread his Hershey bars and kisses everywhere. Soon there were sold in newsstands, grocery stores, bus stations, and restaurants. His factory made 100,000 pounds of chocolate a day enabling him to sell bars at 5 cents a piece. The government sent chocolate to troops during World War One because it didn’t spoil and had a lot of sugar. The soldiers loved the taste and by World War Two the average G.I. ate 50 pounds of chocolate a year. The U.S. Air Force was the largest purchaser of M&Ms which helped energize bomber pilots during long missions over North Africa. Number two on that list is the Army which issued M&Ms to soldiers situated in regions that were too hot to sustain ordinary chocolate. When the war ended, the chocolate craze was ready to take hold in America and millions of obese kids later, we couldn’t imagine life without it.