Everything
You Everything
You
Ever
Ever
Ever
Wanted to Know About Chocolate
By Becky
If you ever wondered about chocolate, then you have come to the right place. This is filled with all the answers to the questions you ever asked about chocolate. Click on a link below to pick a subject to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about chocolate.
What is the History of Chocolate?
Big Question: What are Other Uses for Chocolate?
What is the History of Chocolate?
The ancient Olmec people of Central America were the first to crack open the cacao bean, but the Mayans were the first to use it. They farmed cacao plants and traded with the Aztecs for gold. They made a drink called “chocolatl”, made with cocoa powder and water. The Mayans drank cups of warm chocolatl while the Aztecs drank it cold. Sugar had not been added yet, so the drink was very bitter. Vanilla bean and chili beans were often served with the drink. The drink was only available at special occasions such as rituals and royal feasts, and was only for the powerful. To make even more of a delicacy, it was poured from a great height into a cup to make creamy foam at the top.
When Spanish explorers came in search of precious stones and metals, the Aztecs
and Mayans welcomed them as guests of honor. The Spanish saw gold, jewels, and
little brown beans. They took the empire by force and claimed the land and
treasure for Spain. The crew triumphantly sailed back. One story says that on
the way back they found a Mayan ship sailing toward the shore. They stole
everything from the ship, including two barrels of brown beans. No one paid
attention to the beans until they returned to Spain. There a drink was made,
but sugar cane was added to make a sweet drink. The name was changed to
“chocolate”. It was said to be healthy because of how rich it tasted. This
caused people to spread the news. The news of the drink spread through Europe
and all the way to England. English pirates were sent to attack ships importing
cocoa beans.
Chocolate was brought back to the Americas by colonists, and it continued from there. The first chocolate factory opened in 1765. In 1828 Coenraad van Houten invented the first chocolate press. It made chocolate taste better because it separated the cocoa mass from the thick cocoa butter. In the 1840’s, the world’s first chocolate bar was made. In the 1870’s Henrik Nestlé invented milk chocolate by adding condensed milk to the mixture, and in 1879 Rudolf Lindt invented the conch machine, which rolls the chocolate into a fine texture. But one of the most famous “chocolatiers”, Milton Hershey, opened a factory in Pennsylvania next to some dairy farms. They introduced and mass produced their unique chocolate kisses. The factory was a popular roadside stop, so it expanded over the years from a small factory, to a tourist attraction, and finally to a town with a golf course, hotel, houses and a huge factory standing in the center. The roads are called “Chocolate Road” and “Cocoa Avenue”. It also has streetlamps and buildings shaped like Hershey kisses.
From the rainforest to the factory, chocolate is the ultimate treat.
We start the process of a chocolate bar deep in the rainforests of Central and South America. Cocoa trees are planted on cocoa farms. The trees produce pink or white blossoms that, after five months of growing, develop into cocoa pods. The pods are picked and cracked open with hammers, and they contain up to forty beans covered in a thick white paste. The beans sit in the sun for a week and are exported to chocolate factories worldwide. When the beans arrive at the factory, they are put into a hulling machine to separate the “nib”, or inside, from the outer shell. The nibs are ground up into a thick paste and separated into the cocoa mass, the main part, and the thick cocoa butter. It is then decided what kind of chocolate it should be.
White Chocolate
Sugar and milk are made into a thick, creamy liquid and are mixed with the cocoa butter. It is not real chocolate because it has no cocoa mass.
Dark Chocolate
This is the original chocolate that the native South Americans drank. It is not as bitter because sugar is in it. The cocoa mass is mixed with sugar and melted cocoa butter. It has a good balance of flavors.
Milk Chocolate
Milk and sugar are mixed and heated together. Cocoa mass is added, and the mixture dries until it is hard and chunky. It is ground up and cocoa butter is added. Milk chocolate has a little bit of everything.
After the chocolate is made, it is sent through a cool tunnel to harden. Finally, the chocolate is wrapped and shipped to candy stores everywhere. Yum!
Big Question: Can Chocolate be Used for Something Else?
Chocolate may have uses other than a delightful dessert. First of all, millions of cocoa pods are wasted every day. We could make something out of the pods. The shape would be perfect for a cup or candle holder if the bottom was flattened. They could also be useful because they are so hard that they can only be broken by a hammer. Inside the pod is a thick paste. It could be used as a glue substitute.
With actual chocolate, some people make sculptures. Chocolate can withstand 98.6 degrees before it begins to melt. Houses for people in cold climates could be made of chocolate!
Chocolate could be more than what we think it is. Since the age of the Aztec Empire and to the time of Milton Hershey, we have only used it as a sweet treat. From the rainforest to the factory, it’s just more candy. But now we know chocolate is more than that. Chocolate is the start of recycling.
(Everywhere I looked to find out everything I ever, ever, ever found out about chocolate)
Burleigh, Robert.
Chocolate, Riches from the Rainforest. Jacksonville, Illinois: Bound to
Stay Bound, 2005.
National Weather Service.
Fahrenheit to Celsius Converter. (Online) Available at
http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm. Visited October 3, 2007.
Polin, C.J. The Story of
Chocolate. Jacksonville, Illinois: Bound to Stay Bound, 2005.