Discovery of Chocolate

Chocolate is made from the cacao tree or cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao), which is native to the forests of Central America.

The Aztecs of Mexico ate beans from the cacao, which they thought were a gift from the god Quetzalcoatl.

The Aztecs used cacao beans (cocoa beans) to make a cold drink called chocolatl. Chocolatl was made by roasting and grounding the beans and then adding peppers and other spices.

In 1494, Christopher Columbus brought some cacao beans to Spain.

When Herman Cortés and his men were in Mexico, they added sugar to chocolatl because the Aztec's drink was too bitter for them.

The Spanish kept chocolate-making a closely guarded secret for almost one hundred years.

Eventually, however, the secret was discovered and chocolate, which was only consumed as a beverage, was made in France, Italy and England.

In 1657, the first chocolate house, where chocolate was sold to be drunk on the premises, similar to a modern cafe, was opened in London.

Before long, chocolate houses appeared in a number of European cities.

Only the rich could afford chocolate, so these chocolate houses became very fashionable places.

In the nineteenth century, a Dutch inventor named Coenraad Johannes van Houten invented a process for removing cocoa butter, a natural vegetable oil, from cacao beans.

By using van Houten's process, it was possible to make cocoa powder; and by adding the surplus cocoa butter to another lot of ground beans, together with some sugar, it was possible to produce solid chocolate as we know it today.