Hot chocolate is a delicious drink that is a cocktail of cocoa powder or chocolate, sugar, and milk. This delicious beverage can be traced back to the Mayan and Aztec civilizations in which they consumed their chocolate drinks made from roasted cocoa seeds mixed with spices like chili and achiote or annatto.

The chocolate beverage was not only enjoyed but was also revered. Unfortunately, not everyone had the honor to drink chocolates during those times, only the members of the ‘upperclass’ could drink it.

Chocolate was thought to be helpful in relieving exhaustion and was associated with fertility. The cocoa beans were also used by these old civilizations as currencies. 

But the chocolate mixture during the old times is not as delicious as today’s.

When European settlers came to the south Americas, they found the drink a bit repulsive. Even when Christopher Columbus had returned to Europe and brought with him cocoa beans from his travels to the New World; the chocolate was ignored.

It was only the time when a certain Hernan Cortez visited Mexico in the year 1517 when chocolate began to make its way to the world. Cortez had met the Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma, and was introduced to some of the emperor’s traditions and activities. One of which is his favorite beverage, the chocolate.

The emperor served Cortez the chocolate drink in a goblet made of gold. The chocolate of the emperor was then a mixture of powdered cocoa beans, vanilla, spices, and honey. 

The “ritual” impressed Cortez so much that he brought a lot of cocoa beans back to his native Spain. He also brought with him equipments for making chocolate beverages.

The Spaniards kept the chocolate a secret for a long time. It was only after one hundred years that the beverage became very popular in Europe.

When chocolates found its way to Belgium, it was like a match made in heaven! Belgians are known for their exquisite cuisine that is at par with the French.

The Belgians have their own way of making chocolates. Through the years, they have honed their skills and perfected the manufacturing of chocolates of the best quality. In this perfection of this delicacy, it is easy to assume that chocolates are to Belgians as electronics gadgets are to Japan.

There are a number of varieties of Belgian hot chocolates to choose from and all seem to send the drinkers to paradise. From the moment the lips touch the cup and smell the aroma of the beverage, you will already feel the essence of the beverage being absorbed in your body. And the perfect aftertaste that is like no other hot chocolate you can find anywhere else in the world.

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In the mid-1800’s during the California gold rush, Frenchman Etienne Guittard journeyed to the Barbary Coast in hopes of discovering gold.

Although he never found it, San Francisco discovered him for the delicious chocolate he had brought from his uncle’s factory in France.  Etienne had brought the delicious French chocolate to trade for mining supplies.  He found that the wealthy miners were very much willing to pay premium prices for this luxurious treat.

Eitenne then sailed back to Tourmus, France to work in his uncle’s chocolate factory till he could afford to buy his own chocolate making equipment.  Already skilled as a chocolate manufacturer, Etienne established the Guittard Chocolate Factory in San Francisco in 1868.

1906 Guittard Chocolate Company was destroyed by the earthquake.  But, Horace, Etienne’s son, who was running the company then quickly rebuilt on Main Street.  Here he introduced coffee, tea and spices as well as chocolate.

The facility was moved from along the San Francisco waterfront where Guittard Chocolates opened for business on prestigious Commercial Street in 1868 to Burlingame, California by Horace’s son Horace A. Guittard.

Horace A. was instrumental in bring the company into the era of automation.  But he continued to operate in old world fashion by producing small batches and tailoring products to his customer needs.  This approach allowed the company to be at the forefront of innovation for several American food trends.

Perhaps Guittard’s earlies and most important innovations was their propiertary Guittard Sweet Ground Chocolate.  San Francisco’s Cliff House used the blend with their Cliff House Vanilla.

Guittard milk chocolate chips, white chips and super-sized chips and the idea of truffles were some of their other innovations.

The Guittard family has continued as the oldest family owned and operated chocolate company in the US to manufacture a great variety of chocolate and chocolate products for chocolatiers and chefs.  And today is only one of ten chocolate makers in the U.S.

Their Gourmet Bittersweet Chocolate, High Sierra White Chocolate and French Vanilla were each awarded 1992 Gold medals by the Chefs in America Awards Foundation.

So, perhaps, Etienne did find his gold.

Technorati Tags: bittersweet chocolate, chocolate, fine chocolate, gourmet chocolate, guittard

by Elaine González

Tradition dictates how the drink, Chocolate Mexicano, should be made. In Oaxaca, where more is consumed than anywhere else, it is cooked in a specially shaped pot and whipped until frothy with a molinillo, a long wooden stick with rings at the bottom that spins when the stick is rolled between the palms.

Mexican-style hot chocolate is always served with a cap of foam, partly to minimize the skin that forms, but also because the foam is said to embody the spirit of the chocolate – and the energy of the person who made it. In rural Mexico, women go to great lengths to achieve that foam cap. If the molinillo doesn’t produce enough froth, they hold the pot high above the head and pour the hot chocolate back and forth from pot to drinking cup, just as their ancestors did.

Some time during the 17th century, upper-class Spanish women of San Cristólbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, became involved in a conflict with the bishop over their conduct during Mass. The ladies, it seems, suffered from such weak stomachs that they could not survive without a cup of very hot chocolate in the middle of the service. This disruptive practice provoked a ban on food and drink in the House of God. The women, unyielding, vowed never to attend Mass in the cathedral again, rather going to church in the convents.

Subsequently, the Bishop of Chiapas was found poisoned – with a tainted cup of chocolate in his hand and a little smile on his face. It was the first recorded case of “Death by Chocolate.”

Long before chocolate became synonymous with confections, 17th century colonial cooks in equatorial America were using it as an ingredient in stews and sauces. The most famous savory chocolate recipe was born in the kitchen of the Santa Rosa Convent in Puebla, Mexico. Sor Andrea de la Asunción was instructed by the bishop to prepare a special dish for the visiting Viceroy of New Spain. She assembled nearly 100 of her best ingredients for a sauce befitting the prize turkey she had selected. Why she added chocolate to the sauce is a mystery. Was it deliberate, to offset any deficiencies in the sauce, or, as a charming folk tale suggests, did an errant breeze blow some into the pot? Some historians believe that Sor Andrea simply borrowed the idea from local Indians. In any event, Mole Poblano de Guajolote went on to become Mexico’s national dish.

The aroma of chocolate permeates the air around the local cacao-grinder’s shop in Oaxaca as the Days of the Dead (October 31 – November 2) approach. Chocolate tablets, personalized chocolate skulls, and chocolate-spiked black moles are prepared to adorn festive home altars for October 31, All Hallow’s Eve, when the dead souls return to feast on their favorite foods. The festivities blend ancient and modern religious rituals in a mixture of reverence, revelry, and mockery of death itself.

Chocolate has always played a role in Mexican life and death rituals. Early civilizations considered the “food of the gods” the perfect offering during human sacrificial rites because they believed the cacao pod symbolized the heart, and chocolate the blood. Festive celebrations also included chocolate, as they do today.

As October draws to a close, families in Oaxaca converge on local cemeteries to clean the tombs and gravestones and decorate them with flowers and candles in preparation for the arrival of the souls of the dead. Late in the afternoon on November 1 they return with food and drink and chocolate, freshly ground and shaped by hand, which they place on the graves for the communal celebration which will last until dawn.

The people of Mexico have honored their dead with gifts of chocolate for centuries. To sustain them on their journey to the afterlife, ancient nobles were buried with a drinking vessel filled with chocolate, as well as a handful of cacao beans for use as payment on arrival. In remote villages in southern Mexico, a gourd of chocolate is still included in every burial to soothe the dead spirit in its new life.

Quetzalcoatl’s legendary gift of chocolate has transcended time and geographic boundaries to become one of the world’s most cherished foods. Advances in the manufacture of chocolate, combined with the talents of master confectioners, have transformed the rustic, unrefined, ground cacao of the Maya into the exceptionally smooth, velvety chocolate products we relish today. As we enjoy these great accomplishments, let us acknowledge with deep gratitude the contributions of generations past, whose primitive methods and passion for chocolate created a sacred legacy that has enriched us through the ages.

Technorati Tags: history of chocolate

by Elaine González

Chocolate’s botanical history is dark and mysterious, rooted in ancient mythological tales. It is said that Quetzalcoatl, the benevolent “Feathered Serpent” god, took human form, descended to earth and presented the ancient people of Mexico with a gift from the garden of Paradise: the cacao tree. He showed them how to plant the tree, harvest the fruit, and prepare his favorite drink, Xocolatl. He instructed Tlaloc, the god of rain, to nourish the tree; Xochiquetzal, the goddess of love, was told to adorn it with flowers and infuse it with her spirit.

Linnaeus, the great 18th century botanist, memorialized the legend by naming the tree Theobroma cacao L, “Food of the Gods,” from the Greek words theo (god) and broma (food). Many botanists believe that the first cacao trees grew wild in the Amazon basin or in the Orinoco Valley of South America. The domestication of the cacao tree, however, did not begin until it reached the lush tropical lowlands of Central America and southern Mexico over 3,000 years ago.

The Olmecs, the oldest civilization of the Americas (1500-400 B.C.), were probably the first users of cacao. Though few written records survived their swampy terrain environment, recent linguistic findings suggest the word “cacao” is derived from the word kakawa in Mixe-Zoquean, believed to have been their language. The Olmec presence is still evident in Tabasco, Mexico, in the colossal heads they left behind.

The chocolate legacy passed from the Olmecs to the Maya, one of Mesoamerica’s most advanced civilizations. The Maya built cities and temples, mastered astronomy and mathematics, and consumed cacao-based drinks made with beans from their plantations in the Chontalpa region of what is now eastern Tabasco. Archaeologists have discovered drinking vessels, elaborately decorated with chocolate illustrations that contain traces of ceremonial chocolate drinks dating from 250 to 900 A.D. Today, in the same Chontalpa region, descendants of the Maya still grow and harvest cacao and prepare Chorote and Pozol, cacao-corn-based drinks similar to those consumed by their noble ancestors.

Cacao beans were so valued in ancient Mexico that the Maya and later (Toltec and Aztec) civilizations used them as currency to purchase small household items and pay for various services; a large tomato was worth one bean, a rabbit 10 beans, and a slave 100 beans. Taxes levied against conquered tribes were also paid in cacao beans, but by the sack, each containing about 24,000 beans.

Some cacao beans were also sold in markets for consumption by the elite – the nobility, warriors and long-distance merchants. Today, vendors in markets all over Mexico sell cacao beans to those who still grind them at home.

Moctezuma, the great Aztec emperor, loved chocolate so much that he consumed 50 cups each day at his sumptuous 300-course banquets. Then he adjourned to his harem (presumably to celebrate his accomplishment). Pity the poor cook who had to prepare all those drinks! First she toasted the beans on a clay comal (griddle) over an open fire. Then, hunched on her knees over a three-legged, slanted stone metate, she laboriously ground the beans until a stream of liquid chocolate trickled off the metate’s edge and filled an earthen bowl. Finally, she added water for a coarse mixture, which she flavored with one, or more additions of honey, dried flowers, vanilla, achiote (annatto – for color), chili, allspice or finely ground corn.

Many indigenous people in rural Mexico still prepare their chocolate this way. Today’s hot cocoa is a far cry from the exotic chocolate drink that Hernán Cortés first sampled at Moctezuma’s table when he arrived in 1519. The drink repelled the Spanish at first, but when their wine ran out, they overcame their distaste.

The Spanish quickly transformed Moctezuma’s brew by heating it and adding ingredients they had brought with them to the New World: sugar, cinnamon, ground almonds, milk. This mestizo recipe is still used today in most of the Spanish-speaking world and in homes that preserve the old traditions.

(Customarily, churros, pieces of bread or crispy cookies are dunked into steaming hot chocolate, thus preventing many a burnt lip).

story continued in History of Chocolate end.

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In the early stages of the South American conquest, the Spaniards discovered a particularly fragrant strain of the cacao bean growing wild in the region south of Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo and throughout the tropical lowlands bordering the Caribbean on Venezuela’s northern coast.

Delicate and aromatic, this cacao tree traveled poorly. Attempts to transplant, what became known as the Criollo varietal, to plantations in the more populated regions of the country or abroad, invariably met with failure.

So, Venezuela became the only source for this special cacao. When Jose Rafael Zozaya and his father-in-law, Carmelo Tuozzo founded Tuozzo Zozaya & Cia in Caracas in 1929, it was the second chocolate company to be established in Venezuela.

There they turned out perhaps the finest chocolate made in Venezuela, which they proudly named “El Rey” — the King.  Pride in their work, a solid reputation for quality and a faithful, expanding clientele helped them prosper and grow.

In 1973, the principals went public and began to orient the new company toward processing cocoa and exporting its high quality derivatives (liqueur, butter and powder) to the United States, Europe and Japan.

The world’s best chocolates have always depended on Venezuelan cacao beans to impart that extra touch of fragrance and aroma.  So, in 1989,  Chocolates El Rey decided to enter the global chocolate market by producing a chocolate using 100% Venezuelan cacao beans.

El Rey’s premium quality chocolate couvertures are manufactured with the famed Carenero bean, a single variety cacao grown in the north central region of Venezuela and exported for use by chefs and chocolatiers around the world.

Technorati Tags: chocolate, premium chocolate, venezuela cacao bean

While not a chocolate manufacturer, Jean Neuhaus and his family contributed significant developments for chocolatiers.

1857 saw the ambitious Swiss, Jean Neuhaus, leave his native city of Nechatel and set himself up in  Brussels Belgian.  With his brother-in-law, a pharmacist, he opened his “first pharmaceutical confectioners” at 25-27 Galerie de la Reine, Europe’s first covered shopping gallery.

Jean Neuhaus and brother-in-law made cough sweets, liquorice for stomach complaints and a bitter belgian chocolate bar.

Meanwhile, Jean’s son Frederic, learned the art of confectionery and joined his father’s blossoming “confectioners” which was fast becoming famous across the city.  Both devoted themselves to producing caramels, jellied fruits and vanilla chocolate.

The pharmaceutical products gradually disappeared and the old pharmacy became the finest confectionery in Brussels. In 1895, the name of the business was changed to “Confiserie et Chocolaterie NEUHAUS-PERRIN”.

The chocolate store grew within the family hands and in 1912, Jean Neuhaus, the grandson of the founder, created the first bite-sized filled chocolate and named it praline.   The Belgian Praline is born.  This new technique created a revolution in the chocolate making business.

His wife, a few years later invented the ballotin, the iconic luxury box used to package fine chocolates. The precious handmade pralines could now nestle alongside one another in covered layers. The practical gold and green packaging with its embossed letter “N” has barely changed to the present day.

To Jean Neuhaus’s credit, his confectionery became of such note that a royal visit was made at the end of the war in 1918 by the young Prince Leopold and the Prince of Wales.  They had apparently stopped in to try a new praline that was the rave of the day.

Since 1991, the Neuhaus Company has been the market leader in the luxury praline sector in Belgian and Luxembourg.  It has an international network of nearly 2,000 sales outlets and more than 2400 tons of Neuhaus products are sold annually in 50 countries.

In 2000 His Majesty King Albert II, after the Royal Festival, bestowed upon Neuhaus  the title of Accredited Supplier to the Belgian Crown.

Technorati Tags: ballotin, chocolate, confectionery, praline

In North America, most luxury chocolate consumers know the Callebaut name and equate it with top of the line Belgian chocolate. This remarkable company is almost 150 years old.

In 1850, shortly after the invention of solid chocolate, the Callebaut family founded a diversified company.  It consisted of a mill, a dairy, a brewery and a mineral water bottling plant.

In 1911 the company started to concentrate on manufacturing chocolate bars and tablets.  In 1925, Callebaut began producing its own chocolate.

The company later developed specialized skills in the manufacture of chocolate coating, and sold its products to fellow chocolate producers.

In 1981, the Callebaut family sold its own shares to the Swiss group Interfood, which later took over or merged with other large European chocolate companies such as Suchard, Van Houten and S&A Lesme.

In 1988, Callebaut ceased production of its consumer products and concentrated exclusively on coating or couverture chocolate.

Callebaut works closely with its customers to develop new types of chocolate and compound coatings. The quality image of Callebaut and the strength of its international distribution network have enabled the company to increase export volumes significantly to become the largest chocolate manufacturer in the World.

Bernard Callebaut came from a family four generations deep in chocolate making.  Today, the fifth generation, he is a master craftsman living in Calgary, Alberta Canada since 1983.  Known as Chocolatier Bernard Callebaut, his creations have been applauded all around the globe.

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Raised in rural central Pennsylvania with no formal education, Milton S. Hershey, as a teenager took on a four year apprenticeship to a candy maker in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Then in 1876 he attempted to start his own candy business and failed despite the 6 years of hard work he put in to it.

Then he moved to Denver and began working with a confectioner who taught him how to make caramels using fresh milk.  Moving to New York City he started up a second candy business.  It also failed.

A true entrepreneur, Milton brushed off the failure and returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and tried again to make a go of the caramel business.  This time it worked.  He became extremely successful.

The Lancaster Caramel Company was shipping all over the U.S. and Europe, employing up to 1400 people.  It wasn’t long before he became one of the area’s leading citizens.

Milton Hershey became fascinated with the art of chocolate making and purchased German chocolate-making machinery exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He bought the equipment for his Lancaster plant and soon began producing chocolate coatings for his caramel and  a variety of chocolate creations.

For years he worked at perfecting a viable recipe for making milk chocolate.   The Swiss had closely guarded their secret of making milk chocolate.  Finally he hit upon the right formula of milk, sugar and cocoa that allowed him to realize his long held dream of mass producing and distributing milk chocolate candy.

Now what had been a luxury for the rich only, could be enjoyed by any one who could afford a Hershey Bar.

Hershey sold the Lancaster Caramel Co. for $1 million in 1900 in order to concentrate exclusively on his chocolate business. Three years later, he returned to Derry Township, where he was born, to build a new factory. There he could obtain the large supplies of fresh milk needed to perfect and produce fine milk chocolate.

In 1903 he began construction on what was to become the world’s largest chocolate manufacturing plant. The facility, completed in 1905, was designed to manufacture chocolate using the latest mass production techniques.   milk chocolate quickly became the first nationally marketed product of its kind.

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In 1893 Otto Schoenleber was searching for a new business venture in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He met a chocolate maker and the two men formed a partnership and founded a new company.
On May 9, 1894, the Ambrosia Chocolate Company opened for business in Milwaukee. The founder, Otto J. Scholenleber agreed that “Ambrosia” would be a truly appropriate name, for the Swedish scientist, Lineaus, had identified the cocoa tree as theobroma cacao …”Food of the Gods.”

Throughout the early years, the little company struggled. A firm believer in the axiom, “There is no such word as failure,” Otto Schoenleber and his employees worked together so that at the end of the first two years, the business was established.  Ambrosia had trade extending over the West and Northern United States.

In 1907 the first expansion took place and a three story addition was added.  1911 a five story addition was added.  Then in 1913 Gretchen Schoenleber joined her father as an associate.
Concentrating on consumer items: penny goods and such favorites as solid chocolate confectionery, Peter Peter Bars, Angel Food, Chocolate Cigars, baking chocolate and breakfast cocoa in these startup years, the variety then expanded into chocolate bars for the first vending machines.

Gretchen became president upon the death of her father in 1927. Surviving the stock market crash of 1929, Ambrosia built a four-story addition in 1930, allowing for office space, and more manufacturing area.

Another addition was completed in 1941, and once again Ambrosia supplied chocolate to the armed forces during World War II.

Gretchen passed away in 1953, and L. Russell Cook was elected Ambrosia’s president, beginning a new period of growth. Modernization and expansion were the keys, and in 1955 one of the first bulk sugar systems in Milwaukee was installed.

The next few years were filled with further expansion with the acquisition of the Hooton Chocolate Company in 1961, the merger with W.R. Grace & Company in 1964 and a six-story addition in 1967.

W.R. Grace & Company formed Grace Cocoa in 1988. It was divided into three operating divisions: Ambrosia became part of the Chocolate Americas Division, specializing in chocolate and compound baking chips and coatings. Merckens Chocolate, Mansfield, MA, joined the division in 1990.

Ambrosia Chocolate eventually became a subsidiary of Archer Daniels Midland.

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