The Chocolate Houses of Pepys' London

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 23, 28 January 1939, Page 13 (Supplement)

The Chocolate Houses of Pepys' London

SOMEW HERE in the troubled Stuart days a dark little diamoiul-paned shop opened in Queen's Head Alley. For a while it went unnoticed, for it displayed no wares. Then the busy folk of the street discovered that the delectable odour which came from its doorway on frosty mornings was not so delicious as the strange, sweet liquid brewed inside. And so, unobtrusively, the ancient drink of the Imeas entered Britain. Chocolate, disdained in every ©cmntrv but Spain, was on the highroad to popularity at last. Did you know that cocoa and chocolate have a histoiy longer than that of wheat.? For thousands of Tears it was the food of that ancient Aztec civilisation "upon which Cortes and his conquistadores stumbled in their search for the golden city, El Dorado. We say food, for the Aztecs did not brew from the ground pod of the cacao tree the sweet hot liquid we know as cocoa. With elaborate ritual and solemnity the golden pods were ground in the Royal kitchens and mixed into a thick, almost solid paste of cocoa, sugar, spices and chillies. This was the strange food that the ill-fated Prince Montezuma offered in chased golden bowls to the band of jungle-weary Spaniards who were to betray him and bring his ancestral city and the civilisation for which he stood crashing to extinction. Ihrough the conquest of Mexico and Peru is interwoven the story of the cacao bean. El Dorado, the dream city of explorers, was a place of golden spires and streets where emeralds were used as coins. So said legend, and that legend took the conquistadores through thousands of miles of steamy jungle, through feverhaunted swamps, up the tremendous Amazon. They found cities, but without golden roads, and where, instead of emeralds, the cacao beans were used for coins! They had a high value, a good slave being worth about a hundred. These beans were taken home by the disappointed explorers "n the"OU World " kn ° Vm ** chocolatl " quite a vogue

Long before this Spain bad known of the cacao pod, though no one had known what to do with it! It wag actually brought to Spain by Columbus in the fifteenth century, and by various explorers after him. But now chocolatl became the drink of the grandees of Spain. For cocoa very rapidly became liquid. Made with cream, with mild spicing, it was much more to Western tastes. As trade with the fabulous New World developed, bags of cacao beans were in every cargo, as Francis Drake discovered when he captured a galleon with more bags of cacao in the hold than treasure. Disgruntled, he threw them overboard.

The Infanta Maria Theresa, who later became Queen of France, was so fond of cocoa that she took her own chocolate maker with her to her new kingdom, where the habit of cocoa cfrinking rapidly became popular. And so we come to the romantic chocolate houses of the Commonwealth, where the spies of the exiled Stuart King, later to be Charles 11., discussed their secret missions. Chocolate houses were always Jacobean. In the days when the scowling Roundheads tramped the city and London Royalists dare not stir, here and there a dark chocolate house in an alley was the scene of furtive meetings and plots. And they were the scene of tragedy, too, as their closed doors were hammered upon and Cromwell s soldiers with ready pikes entered to scatter the miserable spies who sought to reinstate an impoverished king. With the return of Charles to the throne, when all the gates and doors were thrown open and all the bells pealed for days, the little chocolate shops took on a new importance. In the days when the English

Court was a byword for extravagance and luxury, wealthy men and fashionable ladies had the habit of making the chocolate houses a morning rendezvous where they could discuss the gossip of the Court and the p ity. Consequently we have Mr. Pepys, the diarist, '"going to drink joceolate, very good." Later the shops became gambling dens, and then, with the advent of \\ illiam of Orange, they reverted to nests of Jacobean intrigue, which, secret and exciting as it often wa9, was doomed to fail so miserably. Cocoa was first sold in dark brown, streaky slabs, like soap. A Dutch chemist discovered that the excess of oil, or butter, could be removed, and it assumed its familiar powder form. The manufacture was then taken up. it is interesting to know, by the same firm which to-day makes our best-known chocolate. With the rise of. popularity came the problem of getting the cacao tree to grow elsewhere than in its native America. A Gold Coast native working in Peru returned home with a pocketful of beans, and that was the beginning of the great cocoa-growing industry of the Gold Coast, which accounts for fully half of the world's market. Once the notorious resort of the "blackbirders," the Gold Coast now exports cocoa valued in millions, about 350,000 tons being sent away yearly. By a wise governmental decree this is all grown by natives, white men being forbidden to grow cacao. Under this law the unsettled and savage remnants of tribes depleted by slave raids became industrious and well paid workers who are fast approaching a standard of civilisation. Cocoa farming is a growing industry, for the world seems to like the taste of the sweet substance which was die Incas' delight. Surely modern people will never become as fond of it as they were, however, for Cortes

reported that fifty jars of it for Montezuma's own uae were brewed every day, and more than two thousand bowls for th« courtiers.

Cortes does not say whether he and his band of adventurers actually found to their taste the rich, sickly substance brewed so elaborately at Montezuma's command. It probably tasted similar to the coarser bar chocolate of to-day's manufacture, and was so nourishing that it was the staple food of the Aztec kingdom. We can therefore say that chocolate is more kin to the ancient form of cocoa than cocoa itself. Certainly, in the modern industry it received far greater attention and manufacture, 4 being cooked, refined and treated to a highly scientific degree, long before it is wrapped decoratively as one of-the world's enticing confections. and up-to-date factories consume the never-ending stream of cocoa from the Gold Coast, >and even in Auckland, so far away from the hub of the cocoa industry, one may find a first-dais factory, busy, noisy, spotlessly clean, with-huskers and mixers endlessly turning, and deft assistants wrapping and sorting at mechanical speed. The chocolate product, nourishing, delicious and medically approved, is the main motive power of the enormous cocoa, industry.-,.

The original Mexican word for the plant was "cacautl," but in old manuscripts it was misspelt so often that, "eoeoa" eventually emerged, the plant being called cacao. It is no relation whatever to cocoanut, or coconut, that word coming from the Spankb, fm»*ning "face." The botanical name of cocoa may be translated as "food of the gods," which may be true of the substance which lays claim tQ being the world's oldest "staff of life."