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History of hot chocolate

Initially Cacoa Beans was harvested by Mayan Indians from Cacoa pods and they frequently traded with their nearby Aztecs. Cacoa Beans may also been given like compliment to more warfare like Aztecs. Aztecs rectified beans into bitter and rough paste, which they mixed with spices and water to form the xocoatl drinks. Aztecs later cultivated the cocoa tree themselves and kept their Quetzalcoatl god as a guard of the cocoa tree. The Aztec monarch Montezuma is quoted, as “The heavenly drink, which accumulates resistance and fights tiredness. A cup of this drink makes it possible a man to work one whole day without food. ” It is recorded that Montezuma use to drank fifty goblets of xocoatl every day.

Cortez constructed a cocoa farm in Mexico in 1519 after watching the Indians using the beans as a form of money. One year later Cortez submitted drink of xocoatl to the court of the Spanish King Charles V. rather than the spices used by Aztecs, the Spaniards began the tradition of adding a sweetening substance, almost cane sugar syrup also acquire from the new world. The Spanish had the problem of spelling the Indian word “xocoatl” and altered the name of their new drink into “chocolat”. Although the chocolat rapidly became accepted through Spain, the Spanish managed to keep it top-secret rest of Europe for hundred years. Throughout those hundred years much of research in fermenting partially and by roasting cocoa seeds, they added the richness increasing to the flavor of drink.

In 1615 the princess of Spanish Anna of Austria presented the chocolat to her lovable husband King Louis XIII. The drink became popular in the court of Louis and the news quickly deviated in Italy and later in Austria. A French man started the first cafe specializing in the chocolat in London in 1657. English changed the name of drink into “chocolate. ” The new attractive drink speedily gained in popularity through Europe. Who it is initially that heated their chocolate drink to make “hot chocolate” is unknown. In 1657 David Chaillou chocolate seller had opened the first chocolate house in Paris and had served the hot chocolate.

The hot and sparkling drink that we know obliged its true beginning to Dutchman Hendrick Van Houten. In April 1828 Van Houten got approval for a process by which a pressure is used to tighten cocoa seeds ground to extract the natural fat called cocoa butter. The cocoa butter composes approximately half of the weight of a cocoa seed. The tight cake, which remains after having extracted the cocoa butter, is pulverized, filtered and cooled in the cocoa powder. Van Houten also fined out that by mixing alkali-potash to beans before they are cooked the acid flavor of the cocoa is neutralized. The process became know as “Dutching” and was used ever. Even today you will hear sometimes the hot chocolate indicated under the name of “Dutch chocolate”.

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