Chocolate
As you take a bite of sinfully delicious chocolate at Aunt Cathy�s house this Christmas, you can thank an elaborate history of money, class distinctions, and nationalism. It all starts with ancient Mexican civilizations, who, despite their penchants for blood sacrifice and other unsavory traditions, did have something going for them: chocolate.
The Mayas set up the first known cocoa plantations in the 600s A.D. after they migrated throughout Mesoamerica. Cocoa beans � technically �cacao� � became a common form of payment � one hundred beans could buy an obedient slave. After 1200 A.D., when the Aztecs subjugated the Mayas, cocoa beans were used as tributes. They were also made into a drink that was popular in high society and used in religious ceremonies � it was thought to bring universal wisdom and knowledge. According to Aztec legend, Quetzacoatl, the Aztecs� principal god, brought the cacao tree with him to Earth from paradise. Paganism does have some sense to it, after all.
In 1502, on Columbus�s fourth voyage to America, he landed in Nicaragua, and so was the first European to discover cocoa beans. However, he was still searching for the sea route to India, and was not interested in cocoa. Too bad � perhaps he would have gotten some inspiration and found a way to the East Indies.
Hernando Cortez, 17 years later, was interested in cocoa, though more as a form of payment than as a beverage and, in the name of Spain, immediately established a cocoa plantation � a sort of new world Spanish bank. The proceeds from this bank were no doubt used to fund the Wars of Religion in the 1500s. One would think that everyone would have been a lot more happy and tolerant under the inadvertent influence of cocoa, but that doesn�t seem to be the case.
More than 70 years after Cortez brought cocoa back to Europe, the first book entirely on the subject of chocolate was published in Mexico. Its title translates, roughly, to �book in which is a matter of chocolate.�
And chocolate was indeed an important matter. Though Princess Anna of Austria, daughter of King Phillip III of Spain, did not have an incredibly happy marriage to Louis XIII of France, she did introduce chocolate as a beverage to the French court. By 1657, a Frenchman had opened a chocolate shop in London.
With the chocolate trend spreading so quickly, it eventually became necessary for the Catholic Church to deliver a statement. Pope Pius V declared in 1569 that cocoa did not break the fast. This was largely because he found it rather unpleasant.
A century after chocolate�s debut in Spain, chocolate�s popularity had spread to the point that Italian chocolateers� reputations were remarked upon in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and chocolateers found themselves welcome guests. The Spaniards, however, were the first ones to develop machine-made chocolate; the place was Barcelona, about 1780.
Though now the Swiss chocolate industry is renowned, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe � the author of Faust and other books � had little faith in it when he went to Switzerland in 1797. In his luggage was chocolate and a chocolate pot.
Perhaps he would have had more confidence if he had gone 22 years later, after Fran�ois-Louis Cailler, having learned the secrets of the chocolate trade in Italy, set up the first Swiss chocolate factory. Or maybe after Swiss Daniel Peter put out the first milk chocolate in 1875 as a result of eight years of experimentation. Rudolph Lindt of Berne made chocolate with the flavor and melting quality that we enjoy to this day only four years afterwards.
Though chocolate was all the rage in Europe, the practice of its consumption did not start in the United States until 1755. We�re making up for lost time, though � these days, Americans eat 100 pounds of chocolate every second.
So when your relatives are annoying you so much you can�t stand it any more, indulge in the allegedly aphrodisiacal and undeniably yummy properties of chocolate. May it inspire you to realize that waistband worries can wait � at least until New Year�s Resolutions.