The Interesting Origins of Chocolate
The Origins of Chocolate
The origins of chocolate, which is derived from the Theobroma cacao tree, stretch back at least 4000 years.
The plant is believed to have originated in the Amazon or Orinoco basins in South America and was regarded by the Aztecs as being of divine origin ('Theobroma' means 'food of the gods').
They used the tree's beans as currency - 100 beans would buy a slave, 12 beans the services of a courtesan and 10 beans a rabbit.
Hernando Cortez was the first European to discover the Cacao Bean. He brought it back from Central America to Spain around 1519. Chocolate was consumed as beverage for centuries in Europe. The Spaniards first added sugar to the drink. In the 1600's the rest of Europeans learned the secret Spanish recipes.
He was the son of Casparus van Houten (1770-1858) and Arnoldina Koster. His father opened a chocolate factory in Amsterdam in 1815, with a mill turned by labourers.
At that time, cocoa beans were ground into a fine mass, which could then be mixed with milk to create a chocolate drink or, with addition of sugar, cinnamon and vanilla, made into cookies. However, the high fat content made the chocolate very hard to digest.
The answer to the question of who invented chocolate, or rather who discovered a use for the cocao bean, seems to date back around 3500 years ago to the Olmec civilization, the oldest known peoples in the Eastern area of Mexico. The cocoa plant was probably growing wild in that equatorial region during the Olmec period, which they then cultivated.