A Brief History of the Ecstacy of Chocolate
The Roots of Chocolate in Ancient American Cultures
The history of chocolate is much longer and more involved than most people are familiar with. Most people tend to go to a store and purchase a candy bar without thinking of the rich history of the rich treat.
Walking into a grocery store and throwing a chocolate bar on the counter one would never know that what we find to be a cheap, rich chocolaty experience, started thousands of years ago as a bitter drink that at least in Aztec culture was reserved for the honored members of society.
It wasn’t exactly restricted to royalty, but only royalty, priests and such personages as decorated soldiers and honored merchants had access to it.
Chocolate is created based on the cacao seed and was once used as a form of Aztec currency. Defeated enemies were many times forced to pay their ransom in cacao seeds.
The Maya were the first people known to have discovered the cacao tree in the rain forests of South America. They took the seeds from the tree and cultivated them in their own cities and villages during the Classical Maya Period (250-900 A.D.).
However, taking chocolate from the cacao seed to a sweet had a long history, especially since sugar as a commodity crop wasn’t available to the Mesoamerican people. After harvesting, the seeds were fermented, roasted and ground up into a paste. The paste was then mixed with water and various ingredients such as cornmeal and chili peppers into a spicy, frothy drink.
Let’s face it, this was not the stuff of Hershey and Lindt bars, Leonidas, Dove or Ghirardelli chocolates. There were no truffles, sampler boxes or chocolate covered strawberries, blueberries or chocolate covered cherries. This was a very raw product that, like middle-ages wine, had to have a LOT of help to get swallowed. It was nothing to go into an intense chocolate ecstacy about. From the Maya, cacao migrated to the Aztec both as a trade commodity and through conquest. Like ransom, tributes from conquered people were required to be paid in cacao seeds.
Here ends step one of the History of Chocolate! Be sure to visit Chocolate Ecstacy to take the next step!
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