Ancient, magic appeal of chocolate, 'food of gods’

Press, 8 February 1985, Page 16

Ancient, magic appeal of chocolate, 'food of gods’

The New World explorer, Hernan Cortes, was so impressed to find the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma drinking “xocoatl” out of golden goblets that he took some cacao beans, source of the precious beverage, home to Spain in 1528. Thus was born today’s multi-billion-dollar chocolate industry, built on the universal craving for. the product of a wondrous tree labelled Theobroma — “food of the gods.” That lyrical nomenclature was furnished by Linnaeus, the great classifier who was known for his scientific detachment.

Cortes, a man with his eye on a golden doubloon, and his fellow Spaniards took some of the miracle beans to Trinidad, Haiti, and the West African island of Fernando Po, now Bioko. From Fernando Po to the mainland went one pod of beans. Today, all the world’s cacao comes from a dozen nations within 20 degrees of the Equator, in moist, tropical climates. Bahia state, in eastern Brazil, and the Ivory Coast account for 45 per cent of the beans. The Spanish nobility added cane sugar and water to the brew introduced by Cortes, and heated it. For almost a century, Spain had a virtual monopoly on the cacaobean market, but word of the

delectable drink eventually spread around Europe. By the early 1700 s, chocolate houses were starting to compete with coffee houses in London. In 1765, a chocolate factory opened in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1828, a Dutch chemist learned to press the fatty cocoa butter out of the bean and make cocoa powder. In 1847, “eating chocolate” came on the scene when cocoa butter and sugar were mixed with a paste of ground beans. The Swiss made a big breakthrough in 1875, mixing condensed milk with chocolate to produce solid milk chocolate. New machines added smoothness by stirring, or conching, the liquid chocolate. Before long, an enterprising American, Milton Hershey, became the Henry Ford of chocolate-makers, mass-producing it to make it affordable.

Today, the United States leads the world both in cacao-bean imports and in chocolate production. Even so, Europeans are bigger chocolate-eaters. The Swiss are the biggest, with annual per capita consumption of about 10 kilograms. Gordon Young followed the chocolate trail around the world, from the tree to the table, in the November issue of “National Geo-

graphic.” The only common denominator he found in the dozen candy factories he visited in the United States and Europe was automation. He also reports a number of other facts about chocolate. Among them: • Sweet-makers sometimes use other ingredients, usually vegetable oils, in place of cocoa butter, and the results must, by law, be called “confectionery coating” instead of chocolate. 0 Baby Ruth candy bars, which have such a non-chocolate coating, did not get their name from the late baseball star, but from the youngest daughter of President Grover Cleveland. © Cocoa butter’s oily smoothness and low melting point make it a common ingredient in cosmetics and suntan lotions. • Chocolate itself is almost free of salt and cholesterol. Other ingredients in candy may not be. • Chocolate, its trade associations assert, causes neither acne nor cavities. • Consumed in sufficient quantities, it will make you fat; but it is an excellent high-energy food that has been eaten everywhere, including on Mount Everest and aboard orbiting spacecraft. • People who touted chocolate

as an aphrodisiac in seventeenthcentury Europe may have had a point. It contains small amounts of phenylethylamine, a chemical in the brain that, some say, increases when folks fall in love. • Chocoholics even have their own magazine, “Chocolate News.” It is printed with chocolate-col-oured and chocolate-scented ink. Some of the finest chocolate confections from Europe contain alcohol. Therefore, by law they cannot be imported into the United States.

Young declines to answer the question that nagged him throughout his travels: Who makes the world’s best chocolate? The ultimate answer, he concludes, “lies in the taste buds of each chocolate lover.” To illustrate the commitment some chocoholics have to certain companies, he tells the story of a New York hostess who sent her chauffeur to a London chocolatemaker to replace her dwindling supply of dinner mints. That episode, he writes, illustrates that “chocolate, food of the gods, has an almost magical power to engender emotional extravagance. What else, except fine wine, can do that?” — National Geographic