The Evolution of Chocolate: The Beginning

Chocolate is one of the most popular foods all over the world. It’s in desserts, snacks, and even sneaking in to savory foods. But where did this wonderful food get its start? In South America.

Cocoa powder (the base of any chocolate beverage or candy), comes from the ground seeds of the cacao tree (Fig 1 & 2). The seeds grow inside of an oval-shaped pod surrounded by creamy cocoa butter (sweeter than the cacao seeds and also edible).

It is said that the first peoples to discover chocolate were the Aztecs (Fig. 3). The seeds of the cacao tree were used as tribute in the Aztec empire, and a drink made of a paste of the fermented seeds mixed with chilies and cornmeal, was the drink of choice among the nobility. The beverage stayed a local favorite until Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492. Columbus returned with the cocoa beans to Europe, and introduced them to King Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. However it wasn’t until the Spanish conquistadores (or conquerors), arrived in South America that cocoa became popular in Europe.

The Spanish removed the cornmeal and the chilies from the drink, and it became the drink of royalty. Cocoa remained very expensive due to the fact that it only grew in South America, and it was incorporated into dowries when members of the Spanish aristocracy married into the noble classes of other nations.

It wasn’t until the late fifteen hundreds that the bitter drink was sweetened with cane sugar, and until the sixteen hundreds that milk was finally added. Towards the eighteen hundreds, during the Industrial Revolution, the first cocoa-powder producing machine was invented by Coenraad Johannes van Houten of the Netherlands. The machine separated the cocoa butter from the cacao seeds, leaving a more liquid-soluble powder that could be stirred into milk or cream. This invention led to the rise of chocolate shops (a predecessor to the coffee shop) and the creation of solid bar chocolate in 1875, by Daniel Peter. He added condensed milk to chocolate powder to make the first milk chocolate. It was then that the term chocolate came to describe solid or, eating chocolate instead of the Aztecan-inspired drink.

Once chocolate became popular in solid form, it became a versatile platform for the culinary experts of the day to experiment with new flavors and spices (Fig. 4). For a continuation of chocolate’s evolution, see The Evolution of Chocolate: The Middle.