The Food of the Gods / A Popular Account of Cocoa

E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Karen Dalrymple, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
( Θεω βρωμα )


Ceylon: A Hill Cacao Estate.

When one thinks of the marvellously nourishing and stimulating virtue of cocoa, and of the exquisite and irresistible dainties prepared from it, one cannot wonder that the great Linnæus should have named it theo broma , the food of the gods. No other natural product, with the exception of milk, can be said to serve equally well as food or drink, or to possess nourishing and
is this which makes it invaluable as an alternative food for invalids or infants.

Cacao Trees, Trinidad.
An early English writer on this valuable product spoke truly when he remarked: All the American travellers have written such panegyricks, that I should degrade this royal liquor if I should offer any; yet several of these curious travellers and physicians do agree in this, that the cocoa has a wonderful faculty of quenching thirst, allaying hectick heats, of nourishing and fattening the body.
Such a drink well deserved the treatment it received at the hands of the Mexicans to whom we are indebted for it. At the royal banquets frothing chocolate was served in golden goblets with finely wrought golden or tortoise-shell spoons. The froth in this case was of the consistency of honey, so that when eaten cold it would gradually dissolve in the mouth. Here is a luscious suggestion for twentieth century housewives, handed to them from five hundred years ago!