Subject: Re: when did chocolate emerge?

From: Judy Gerjuoy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 07:53:03 -0400

> I know it is a "New World" food,and that it was popular as a
> semi-sweet drink among the rich in the years following its
> "discovery"...but when did actuall chocolate candy become popular? I
> have been invited to a feast set in the time of the Italian
> Renaissance...could I bring chocolates?

I know of no use of chocolate as a candy in the Renaissance.  I have seen 
circa 1600 drink recipes (which, in my opion are pretty gross since they 
didn't use vanilla, and did use spices such as pepper).  Chocolate as a 
candy appears to have started late 1600's/early 1700's at least in France.  
Off hand I don't know about any other countries.

If you want to bring something with you, sugared almonds would be nice 
and appropriate for that period.

Jaelle

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From: [email-masked]
Date: 16 May 95 14:38:32 -0500

> Off hand I don't know about any other countries.

There's a good history of chocolate in Harold McGee's _On Food and Cooking:
The Science and Lore of the Kitchen_ (1984, Collier), a must have, imho.

Chocolate and Europeans apparently collided on Columbus's 4th voyage in
1504, but the chocolate craze didn't really start until 1640 or so,
when the Spanish in Mexico started adding sugar, cinnamon, cloves, anise,
almonds, hazelnuts, vanilla, orange-flower water, and/or musk to the
native recipe of cocoa, achiote (annatto), maize flour and chili pepper.
In 1648, Thomas Gage wrote of a chocolate uprising in Chiapa Real 
(San Cristobal de las Casas) where the local bishop disapproved of the
local aristocracy having cups of chocolate brought to them during mass...
apparently it progressed to drawn swords on both sides, and soon after,
the bishop died of suspected poison...  Now that's carrying a chocolate
addiction a mite far!

The first chocolate factory in Europe was built in Spain about 1580...
it made a paste with flavorings for mixing with water to make
a drink.  "Within 70 years, despite Spanish efforts to keep it a 
secret, chocolate had found its way into Italy, France and England".

The first recipe he finds for something resembling modern candy
is a mixture of grated chocolate paste, sugar, and plant gums in
18th century cookbooks.  Conrad van Houten invented the screw press
to remove cocoa butter from beans in 1828; this could be added to 
ordinary ground cocoa beans to make a malleable chocolate tolerant of
added sugar.  Fry and Sons, an English firm, introduced the first
"eating chocolate" in 1847.

Kay Klier  [email-masked]

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From: Judy Gerjuoy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 08:05:30 -0400

My comment about chocolate as a candy comes from HISTORY OF FOOD by 
Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell.  It is a history 
of food, but France is the primary focus, although other places/cultures 
are referenced.

On pages577-578 it says

"A former page of the queen mother anne of Austria, one David Challion 
(or possibly Chalion), obtained from the sun King, who still preferred 
Burgundy wine to the Aztec brew, the 'sole priviledge of for 24 years 
ofmaking, retailing, nad telling in all towns of the Kingdom a certain 
composition known as chocolate, in liguid form or in pastilles or in any 
other form that he may please.'  By now a way of evaporating the liquid 
chocolate and moulding it into solid shapes had been discovered.

My guess, but only a guess is that the Spanish or the Portugues might 
have used chocolate as a candy even earlier than this. this is based on 
their relationship with the new world.

In any case, this certainly sounds like chocolate as a candy -although 
not necessarly in the form we are used to, but certainly post Renassance.

Jaelle

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From: Joyce Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 May 1995 19:12:04 GMT

I guess it depends on what you mean by "emerge".  Certainly the
conquistadores brought it back with them.  But from what I know of
Mr. Hershey, he was actually the first one to mass-market it (just
after the turn of the century) in this country, and brought it
>from  a rich man's novelty to common man's confection.

-- Joyce