Best chocolate in the world? Sweet New Year!

History of chocolate

Chocolate was brought to Europe by Hernán Cortés, who was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers that began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Aztec’s prized Xocolatl well above Gold and Silver so much so, that when Montezuma was defeated by Cortez in 1519 and the victorious ‘conquistadors’ searched his palace for the Aztec treasury expecting to find Gold & Silver, all they found were huge quantities of cocoa beans. The Aztec Treasury consisted, not of precious metals, but Cocoa Beans.

Chocolate comes from the fermented, roasted, and ground beans of the Theobroma cacao, the cacao or cocoa tree. The first people clearly known to have discovered the secret of cacao were in the Classic Period Maya (250-900 CE). The Mayans and their ancestors in Mesoamerica took the tree from the rainforest and grew it in their backyards, where they harvested, inflame, roasted, and ground the seeds into a paste. The word “Chocolate” comes from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. The Nahuatl word xocolatl means “bitter water”. The Precolumbian peoples of the Americas (amongst others the Mayans and Aztecs) drank chocolate mixed with vanilla, chilli pepper, and achiote (it is used as a colorant and condiment for traditional dishes in the Caribbean islands, Central and South America, in Brazil is called Urucu). The cocoa beverage was reserved for use in ceremonies as well as for drinking by the wealthy and religious elite and they also ate a Cacao porridge.
The Central American rain forests, where the tropical mix of high rain fall combined with high year round temperatures and humidity, provide the ideal climate for cultivation of the plant from which chocolate is derived, the Cacao Tree.
The  Mayans worshiped the Cacao Tree. They believed it to be of divine origin. Cacao is actually a Mayan word meaning “Gods Food”.
The Aztecs of central Mexico highly valued the beans using them as currency and means to pay for taxes to emperors, because they lived further north in arid regions and  higher altitudes, where the climate was not suitable for cultivation of the tree, they had to acquire the beans through trade or war.  The Aztec’s regarded chocolate as an aphrodisiac and their Emperor, Montezuma is believed to drank it fifty times a day from a golden goblet. The Aztecs called it Xocolatl, the Spanish conquistadors found this almost impossible to pronounce and so modified it to the easier ‘Chocolat’, the English further changed this to Chocolate.
Chocolate in Europe

Chocolate was brought to Europe by Cortez, although previously Christopher Columbus brought some cocoa beans to show Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, but it was Spanish friars from the Spanish armada who introduced it to Europe more broadly. Not until the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs was chocolate imported to Europe, where it quickly became a court favorite, by this time the conquistadors had learned to make the drink more palatable to European tastes by mixing the ground roasted beans with sugar and vanilla.

With no horses, pack animals or wheeled carts in Central America, ancient people got their cocoa beans from one place to another by traveling along the rivers by canoe, or strap big baskets to their backs.  Wealthy merchants would employ porters, and could travel further with their cocoa beans – as far as the Aztec kingdom.
The first chocolate factories opened in Spain, where the dried fermented beans brought back from the new world were roasted and ground. In the early 17th century chocolate powder was commercialised and exported to other parts of Europe. The Spanish kept the source of the drink – the beans – a secret for many years, so successfully in fact, that when English pirates boarded what they thought was a Spanish ‘Treasure Galleon’ in 1579, only to find it loaded with what appeared to be ‘dried sheep’s droppings’, they burned the whole ship in frustration. If only they had known, chocolate was so expensive at that time, that it was worth it’s weight in Silver (if not Gold), Chocolate was Treasure Indeed!
The Cocoa drink made from the powder produced in Spain had become popular throughout Europe, in the Spanish Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany and – in about 1520 – it arrived in England.
The first English Chocolate House appeared in London in 1657 Like the already well established coffee houses, they were used as clubs where the wealthy and business community met to socialise over a cup of chocolate.
For hundreds of years, the chocolate making process remained unchanged. When the Industrial Revolution arrived, many changes occurred that brought the hard, sweet candy to life.
At the end of the 18th century, the first form of solid chocolate was invented in Turin by Doret.
In 1819, F. L. Cailler opened the first Swiss chocolate factory. In 1828, Dutchman Coenraad Johannes van Houten patented a method for extracting the fat from cocoa beans and making powdered cocoa and cocoa butter and developed  the Dutch process of treating chocolate with alkali to remove the bitter taste. This made it possible to form the modern chocolate bar. It is believed that the Englishman Joseph Fry made the first chocolate for eating in 1847, followed in 1849 by the Cadbury brothers.
In 1867, Peter Daniel began experimenting with milk as an ingredient. He brought his new product, milk chocolate, to market in 1875 by removing the water content from the milk to prevent mildewing with the help of  a neighbour, a baby food manufacturer named Henri Nestlé. Later, in 1879, the two went on to form the Nestlé Company.  Rodolphe Lindt invented the process called conching, which involves heating and grinding the chocolate solids very finely to ensure that the liquid is evenly blended. This enabled Milton Hershey to make chocolate even more popular by mass producing affordable chocolate bars.
The Quakers
The Quakers or Friends Church, are religious organizations which trace their origins to a Christian movement in mid-17th century England and Wales were, and still are, a pacifist religious sect, an offshoot of the Puritans of English Civil War and Pilgrim Fathers fame linked to the  history of chocolate. Some of the most famous names in chocolate were Quakers, who for centuries held a monopoly of chocolate making in the English speaking world – Fry, Cadbury and Rowntree. their pacifist religion meant they refrain themselves from many normal business activities, and had a strong belief in the work ethic, they involved themselves in food related businesses and did it very well.
The Fry, Rowntree and Cadbury families in England among others, began chocolate making and Fry of Fry & Sons (founded in Bristol, England) were credited with producing and selling the worlds first chocolate bar. Fry’s have now all but disappeared (taken over by Cadbury) and Rowntree  (York based) have merged Swiss company Nestle, to form the largest chocolate manufacturer in the world in 1988. Cadbury have stayed with chocolate production till it was acquired by American Kraft Foods, HQ based in Chicago and Europe HQ in  Zürich, Switzerland;  in February 2010, after integration the combined Cadbury and Kraft companies became the largest confectionery company in the world again.

The Quakers provided not just employment but everything necessary for their workers i.e.: good housing, health care, education etc. Cadbury built a large town for their employees around their factory near Birmingham, England. Complete with libraries, schools, shops and Churches etc, they called it Bourneville. Like  the chocolate bars!

Sadly, Cadbury factory in England was shut by Krafts on the 15th January 2011. They are moving the  factory to Poland. This post has been updated after publication.

 

Here is a reference, just a quick guide:
Plain Dark Chocolate contains:
·   60% to 70%+ Cocoa solids (cocoa mass and cocoa         butter), 29% sugar, vegetable Lethicin and Vanilla.
Milk Chocolate contains:
·   40% Cocoa Solids (cocoa butter and cocoa mass), 37% sugar, 20% whole milk powder, Lactose, vegetable Lethicin and Vanilla.
White Chocolate contains:
·  49% sugar, 33% cocoa butter, 18% whole dried milk and whey powder, vegetable Lethicin and Vanilla.
Different manufacturers use different variations of the above formulas.
Inferior and mass produced chocolate generally contains much less cocoa solids, (as low as 7% in some cases), with most or all of the chocolate butter replaced by vegetable oil or other fat. Strictly speaking, they should not really be classed as chocolate at all, as they are really chocolate flavoured sweets.
Here are 2 best  dark chocolate bars I’ve ever tasted and links for the manufactures. Please do let me know which one is yours.

 

Save

Share: