Who came up with Chocolate?
Chocolate’s 4,000-year history started in antiquated Mesoamerica, present day Mexico. It’s here that the principal cacao plants were found. The Olmec, probably the most punctual human progress in Latin America, were quick to transform the cacao plant into chocolate. They drank their chocolate during customs and utilized it as medication.
Hundreds of years after the fact, the Mayans lauded chocolate as the beverage of the divine beings. Mayan chocolate was a loved brew made of cooked and ground cacao seeds blended in with chillies, water and cornmeal. Mayans poured this blend starting with one pot then onto the next, making a thick frothy drink called “xocolatl”, signifying “unpleasant water.”
By the fifteenth century, the Aztecs utilized cocoa beans as money. They accepted that chocolate was a gift from the god Quetzalcoatl, and drank it as an invigorating drink, a sexual enhancer, and even to get ready for war.
Chocolate arrives at Spain
Nobody knows without a doubt when chocolate came to Spain. Rumors from far and wide suggest that pioneer Hernán Cortés acquired chocolate to his country 1528.
Cortés was accepted to have found chocolate during an undertaking to the Americas. Looking for gold and wealth, he rather discovered a cup of cocoa given to him by the Aztec ruler.
At the point when Cortés got back, he acquainted cocoa seeds with the Spanish. However still filled in as a beverage, Spanish chocolate was blended in with sugar and nectar to improve the normally severe taste.
Chocolate immediately became well known among the rich and affluent. Indeed, even Catholic priests cherished chocolate and drank it to help strict practices.
Chocolate tempts Europe
The Spanish kept chocolate calm for seemingly forever. It was almost a century prior to the treat arrived at adjoining France, and afterward the remainder of Europe.
In 1615, French King Louis XIII wedded Anne of Austria, girl of Spanish King Phillip III. To praise the association, she carried tests of chocolate to the regal courts of France.
Taking cues from France, chocolate before long showed up in Britain at uncommon “chocolate houses”. As the pattern spread through Europe, numerous countries set up their own cacao manors in nations along the equator.
A Chocolate Revolution
The history of chocolate continues as the treat remained immensely popular among European aristocracy. Royals and the upper classes consumed chocolate for its health benefits as well as its decadence.
Chocolate was still being produced by hand, which was a slow and laborious process. But with the Industrial Revolution around the corner, things were about to change.
In 1828, the invention of the chocolate press revolutionized chocolate making. This innovative device could squeeze cocoa butter from roasted cacao beans, leaving a fine cocoa powder behind.
The powder was then mixed with liquids and poured into a mold, where it solidified into an edible bar of chocolate.
And just like that, the modern era of chocolate was born.
