CHOCOLATE AND COCOA.
CHOCOLATE CRUSHING MACHINE.
Chocolate and cocoa are made from the seeds or beans of the Theobroma Cacao. The fruit of this plant somewhat resembles a cucumber, and contains from twenty to thirty seeds; these are dried and packed for the market. They come to this country from the West Indies (Berbice and Demerara). The beans are roasted in an iron cylinder with holes to let out the vapour, &c.; when cool they are deprived of their husks, and then crushed by means of rollers turning on a flat slab, kept warm by stoves or steam. The seeds when crushed on the warm slab become almost liquid, owing to a kind of butter or concrete oil which they contain, and which melts by a gentle heat. When the seeds are rolled by the machine into a smooth paste, this is either put into a mould of tin and formed into squares and various other forms, or left rough as it is scraped from the slab (this is called “rock” cocoa). For chocolate it is mixed with sugar, and either dried and powdered, or made, as the cocoa, into paste. On the Continent it is flavoured with “vanilla.”