THEOBROMA, FOOD OF THE GODS

“Let any man who has drunk too deeply of the cup of pleasure; who finds his wit temporarily losing his edge, the atmosphere humid, time dragging and the air hard to breathe; let such a man, we say, administer to himself a good pint of ambered chocolate, allowing between sixty and seventy two grains of ambergris to a pound and he will see wonders.”
This advice was given in verse form by that great but rather eccentric food writer, nineteenth century gourmand and philosopher, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in his best known treatise “La Physiology du Goût”. Ambergris, incidentally, is a substance found washed up on beaches and is believed to originate in a sick sperm whale. It reportedly has a rather pleasant aroma and is used in the perfume industry. In the eighteenth century it was popular to mix it with chocolate and thought to be a restorative. After people found out where it came from, it lost its appeal.
Father Bernardino de Sahagun, who wrote the “General History of the Things of New Spain” (Mexico), said about chocolate that taken in moderation “it gladdens one, refreshes one, consoles one, and invigorates one.” He did, however, warn that too much of it, especially when the beans had not properly ripened, was intoxicating. Some other Spaniards claimed that a cup of chocolate first thing in the morning would protect you against snake bite for the rest of the day. I haven’t tried this out myself.
The cultivation of the cacao plant was not done by the Aztecs themselves, although they esteemed it, but probably by some tribes on the coast, in the warm and humid areas where the plant needs to flourish. The origin of the word Cacao is still being disputed by historians, some say it comes from the Nahuatl word for seed “cacahuatl” and others have said it is from the Nahuatl, “xoco” (sour) and “atl” (water). The weakness behind this last assumption is that cacao is not sour but bitter. The late Sophie Coe, an authority on middle and south American pre-Columbian food, in the distinguished company of many other savants, believes that the word comes from the Mayan “caca” or “chaca”(bitter). Still others (Fray Tomas Gage) say that the word is onomatopoeic resembling the noise of chocolate when it is beaten or pounded, supposedly sounding like “Choco-choco”. Mrs Coe believed that the plant originates in the western part of the Amazon river system in which is now Equador and Columbia. Others are convinced that it is native to Central America. It is these perplexities which drive some scientists bananas.
The Aztecs had to import the bean, which was very valuable, and also used it as tender in payments of goods. Eighty to a hundred beans could buy a small mantle or a load of fresh water, said Sahagun, who lamented the practice of counterfeiting cacao beans.
There was a lot of hanky panky going on in the chocolate trade at the time of Hernando Cortes it seems. When Cortes’ party arrived in the legendary city of Mexico, his chronicler Bernal Diaz wrote that Moctezuma, the King - whom he held in high esteem - was almost addicted to this lovely drink. It was served to him in golden cups, while pure chocolate was kept in golden jars. To drink it, they mixed it with honey, “maguey” (a member of the “agave” family and the source of “pulque”, an alcoholic drink), vanilla (of the orchid family and native to tropical America), the flowers of the “Xochinacaztli”, and sometimes chillies and other spices.
When the chocolate was served at the Aztec court, usually after a meal, it was first topped with foam. To make this foam there were special women who specialised in this activity and when they were experts they became so precious that they were exempted from sacrifice to the gods. The Toltecs, who preceded the Aztecs, had a legend about the divine origins of chocolate, supposedly given to mankind by the gods, but it is so lengthy that I can’t produce it here even in severely abridged form.
Through the Spanish conquistadors chocolate reached Spain where they tried to keep the drink a secret. Not everybody approved of it. Analysed by a medical team in the sixteenth century, it was declared the “coldest” drink on earth, only to be taken mixed with “warm” spices like cloves, cinnamon, ginger and so on. In 1644 the Spanish government even passed a law forbidding its sale, but like many similar attempts to control the sale of foodstuffs, it had little effect. According to one of my books (Barbara Norman, “Tales of the Table”), chocolate as a beverage was first introduced to Italy and France by Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip III of Spain and future wife of Louis XIII of France in early 1600. The French took to it quickly and soon it became fashionable among the well to do in France and England as well as in the rest of western Europe to have a cup of chocolate.
Chocolate, as we know it, is derived from the seeds of the chocolate fruit. Like coffee beans, they are fermented and dried in the sun and roasted before they are ground. Untreated chocolate has the disadvantage that it contains a lot of the so-called chocolate butter which has a low melting point. To make a cup of chocolate with untreated chocolate will make it look like a rich soup with a fat eyes floating on the surface. On the other hand, chocolate doesn’t contain enough fat to make it into chocolate bars.
In 1818 a Dutchman by the name of “Van Houten” invented a way to press the butter out of the seeds. This produces the so called cacao powder. Van Houten is still used as a brand name for certain Dutch chocolate products like bars and cacao, although the Dutch chocolate industry seems to have amalgamated with another large chocolate firm called Droste, into one of those super concerns and is called something like the “Dutch Chocolate Industries”. Since it has such a low melting point, chocolate butter is most suitable to use for those medicines which are, for some reason, administered at the other end of the alimentary channel (I had to put it like this for our more conservative and sensitive readers).