Well it does! Cocoa trees grew wild in the Amazon and tropical rain forests of Central and South America for thousands of years – way before it ever reached us in Europe.
Cocoa beans were prized by the Maya Indians as far back as 600 AD. They roasted the beans, and added chilli and other spices to make a drink called ‘xocoatl’. It wasn’t much like our drinking chocolate though.
The Mayan drink ‘Xocoatl’ means “Bitter Water.”
Mayan Indians lived in what’s now Southern Mexico, the tropical Yucatan Peninsula. At first they harvested cocoa beans from wild trees in the rainforest. Then they started growing their own trees by clearing bits of the forest – which shows how important cocoa was to them.
They didn’t only drink the cocoa, they used it as currency too. Here’s an idea of what it was worth:
4 cocoa beans could buy a pumpkin
10 could buy a rabbit
100 could buy a slave
And merchants used cocoa beans to trade for cloth, jade and ceremonial feathers. Just think, if someone hadn’t invented coins and notes, you could have been going to the shops with a pocketful of cocoa beans instead!
Like money and jewellery these days, cocoa beans were valuable and were given as gifts at religious ceremonies and other important occasions.
‘Cocoa fruits were used at festivals for Ek Chuah, the merchant god’.
So how did these ancient people get their cocoa beans from one place to another? With no horses, pack animals or wheeled carts in Central America, instead farmers would travel 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 Aztec Empire
The Aztecs loved their ‘Chocolate’, a luxury drink described as ‘ finely ground, soft, foamy, reddish, bitter with chilli water, aromatic flowers, vanilla and wild bee honey’. Mmmm…
But who were they? The Aztecs were nomads who founded the great city of Tenochtitlan in 1325. Creating a powerful and wealthy empire they conquered the whole of Mexico, but it was too dry to grow cocoa trees in Tenochtitlan, so the Aztecs had to get their cocoa beans from taxes (called ‘Tributes’), or by trade.
‘Tributes’ were given by provinces that the Aztecs had defeated in war
Many gods were worshipped by the Aztecs, and cocoa beans were linked to one in particular, a scary-sounding feathered serpent god of agriculture and creation called Quetzalcoatl. They built enormous temples to him and his biggest fan was their ruler, Moctezuma, Emperor of Mexico. The Aztecs were always convinced they were on the brink of terrible catastrophe, so they made human sacrifices to try and make the gods happy. Plenty of people must have died this way, but at least they got to drink chocolate first!
An old Mexican Indian myth tells of how Quetzalcoatl was forced to leave the country, but left behind the cocoa tree, that he had brought as a gift from the gods. Apparently when the Spanish conquistador (or explorer) Hernan Cortés, arrived in the country in 1517, they may have thought he was Quetzalcoatl come back to visit them.
Hernan
Cortés
Hernan Cortés was a Spanish conquistador sent on an expedition to colonise Mexico in 1517. With 11 ships and 600 men, he landed on the Mexican coast and travelled to Tenochtitlan to meet Moctezuma, ruler of the rich and prosperous Aztecs.
Cortés hadn’t exactly come in peace – but Moctezuma welcomed him anyway, possibly because he thought it was best to get to know the Spanish in order to defeat them later.
Moctezuma gave Cortés ‘chocolatl’, his favourite drink, served in a golden goblet. Apparently Moctezuma used to drink it before going to his harem, and ever since then chocolate has had an (unfounded) reputation of being an aphrodisiac.
"The divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue."--Cortés in a letter to Charles V of Spain.
Poor old Moctezuma was put in prison by Cortés. He became ruler again briefly under Spain, but was then killed by disgruntled Aztecs in 1520, and by July of that year the Aztecs had forced the Spanish out of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish retaliated, holding the city in siege for 75 days until it fell, marking the end of Aztec civilisation.
Cortés was made Captain General and Governor of Mexico. And he never forgot about chocolate – when he returned to Spain in 1528 he loaded his galleons with cocoa beans and equipment for making the drink. Soon 'chocolate' was all the rage amongst the Spanish elite. They kept quiet about it though! It took nearly a century for news of cocoa and chocolate to spread across Europe.
Chocolate Spreads Across Europe
The conquistador Hernan Cortés was the first European to realise cocoa beans were valuable – but someone had brought them back before him. Christopher Columbus stole some from a Mayan trader and brought them over between 1502-1504. He knew they were worth something, but didn’t understand what they were or what to do with them.
Cortés knew better, and brought them to Spain in 1528. Because cocoa beans were in short supply, chocolate was top secret in Spain for 100 years and the only people allowed to process cocoa beans were monks. They added cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar – leaving out the chilli that the Aztecs liked – and realised it was nicer served warm.
The rest of Europe was still in the dark. English and Dutch sailors had found cocoa beans in captured Spanish ‘treasure’ ships coming back from the New World, but they didn’t know what they were and threw them overboard, angry that they’d wasted their time. Some of them thought they were sheep’s droppings!
"A widely celebrated fruit of great importance." --Francesco Carletti
But eventually word got out. An Italian traveller, Francesco Carletti, visited Central America and saw the drink being made and by 1606 chocolate was in Italy. It reached France in 1615 when Anne, daughter of Philip II of Spain, married King Louis XIII of France.
The French Court loved the new drink of chocolate, believing it was exotic, nourishing and good for your health. Cocoa plantations were set up in Cuba and Haiti in 1684, so in France it became much easier to get your hands on the sought-after cocoa beans.
Next it was the turn of the Dutch, who captured Curacao, an island off Venezuela, in 1634 and brought cocoa beans back to Holland. Chocolate probably reached Germany in 1646, brought back by visitors to Italy. And then finally it reached England in the 1650s…
Chocolate Arrives at England
Chocolate arrived in England in the 1650s and the aromatic drink became hugely popular in King Charles II’s court. But you’d have to be rich to drink it – high import duties on cocoa beans meant that it was expensive.
Gradually it started to become more widely available. In 1657 London’s very first Chocolate House was advertised: ‘In Bishopsgate Street, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West Indian drink called Chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time and also unmade at reasonable rates.’
"Went to Mr Bland's and there drank my morning draft in good Chocolatte."--The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 3 May 1664
Soon there were many chocolate houses in London, and like the cafés and coffee shops of today, people went to meet their friends and chat (or gossip) about the issues of the day over a cup of chocolate.
The most famous one was White's Chocolate House in fashionable St James Street, opened in 1693 by an Italian, Frances White. The rich and bitter chocolate drinks were sold alongside ale, beer, snacks and coffee and would have been made from blocks of solid cocoa, probably imported from Spain. You could also buy a pressed cake to make chocolate at home. White’s still exists, but you can’t buy chocolate there now. Like many of the 18th century chocolate houses, it became an exclusive gentleman’s club, and still is to this day.
A new Ingredient - and Chocolate Reaches The Masses
In 1687 an English doctor, Sir Hans Sloane was travelling in Jamaica where he tried chocolate, a local drink. He didn’t like it much, but when he added milk to it, he thought it tasted much better.
He brought his milk chocolate recipe back to England, where it was sold as a medicine. The Cadbury Brothers later used his recipe for the milk chocolate drink they produced between 1849 and 1875.
Chocolate was getting more and more popular, and to meet the new demand, cocoa plantations were built in the West Indies, the Far East and Africa. As a result the price of cocoa beans gradually fell – good news for people who wanted to try chocolate who previously could not afford it…
The high import duties on cocoa were reduced in 1853. Transport had become easier too, due to the Industrial Revolution. It meant that now chocolate was available to a large percentage of the population.
With people clamouring for chocolate, interest grew in how it was made. Some of the earliest cocoa makers were apothecaries or chemists, who considered it a kind of medicine. They also had the equipment and skills to heat, measure and blend the ingredients.
‘Both Fry’s of Bristol and Terry’s of York, two well-known names in chocolate, were founded by apothecaries’.
Other cocoa manufacturers began as grocers – like John Cadbury, who started out in 1824 dealing in tea and coffee in his Birmingham shop, and Rowntree's of York, which branched out from the family grocery business.
It was all still about a chocolate drink though – solid ‘eating’ chocolate was not invented until early Victorian times.
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