From The Conversation, December 22, 2022:
Advent calendars with hidden chocolatey treats, huge tins of Quality Street and steaming cups of hot chocolate festooned with whipped cream and marshmallows are all much-loved wintry staples at Christmastime. But how many of us stop to think about where chocolate actually comes from and how it made its way into our culinary culture?
The story of chocolate has a compelling, rich history that academics like me are learning more about every day.
Chocolate is made by fermenting, drying, roasting and grinding the seeds of a small, tropical tree of the genus Theobroma. Most chocolate sold today is made from the species Theobroma cacao, but Indigenous peoples in South America, Central America and Mexico make food, drink and medicine with many other Theobroma species.
Cacao was domesticated at least 4,000 years ago, first in the Amazon basin and then in Central America. The oldest archaeological evidence of cacao, possibly as old as 3,500 BCE, comes from Ecuador. In Mexico and Central America, vessels with cacao residues date to as early as 1,900 BCE.
Cacao is the name in many languages of Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) for both the tree, the seed and the preparations that come from it; people who use this word give a nod to that ancient, Indigenous past. Cacao is a convenient catch-all term, the way “bread” in English describes a baked food made of flour, water and yeast.
For thousands of years, Mesoamericans have used cacao for many purposes: as a ritual offering, a medicine, and a key ingredient in both special occasion and everyday food and drink – each of which had different names. One of these special, local cacao concoctions was called “chocolat”.
Colonialists and currency
How did chocolate take off like wildfire when its birthplace has been long neglected?The most popular initial use of cacao in the 16th century, by colonists from Europe and Africa in Latin America, was as currency rather than something to eat or drink.My research on cacao as money shows its steady development in the crucial role of small coin, as one of several commodity monies in pre-Colombian Mesoamerica....
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