THE GROWTH AND PREPARATION OF COCOA
Cocoa and chocolate are the roasted and ground product of the beans of a delicate tropical tree, usually grown in the shade of larger and hardier trees and known as “Theobroma Cacao.” This name was given to it by the distinguished botanist, Linnæus, out of compliment to its delicious flavor and nutritious qualities,—the word meaning “the food of the gods.” The beans are obtained from large pods shaped somewhat like cucumbers, which grow on the trunk and lower branches of this tree.
Cocoa has nothing whatever to do with the cocoanut, the fruit of a variety of palm tree; nor with coca, a nerve tonic derived from a variety of South American flax; nor with cocaine, a dangerous anæsthetic.
Cocoa differs from chocolate only because a portion of the cocoa butter has been pressed out of cocoa; whereas chocolate retains the full amount of this remarkable vegetable fat, which is extremely nutritious and has the quality of never becoming rancid. To the latter fact cocoa butter owes its popularity as a cosmetic.
Chocolate had been known to the Aztecs and had been a favorite drink with them—and especially with their king, Montezuma—long before the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, who was the first to introduce it into Europe.
The Spaniards, desiring to keep a good thing to themselves, were very secretive about the new beverage and its preparation, and this attitude accounts for the remarkable slowness with which it became known to Northern Europe. Moreover, its price was almost prohibitive in those days. It took two centuries for it to become really known in London, and it is only in modern times that cultivation and improved methods have brought it into general consumption at a low price. When we consider its nutritive value as a food in addition to its delicious flavor as a beverage, cocoa is the cheapest beverage there is. Chocolate has several times the value of beef per pound and the same is true in only a slightly less degree of cocoa; and cocoa has the added advantage of being so very digestible that it is suited for the use of children and invalids.
After the pods containing the beans are collected, they are cut open, and the beans—some twenty-five or more to each pod—are scooped out, together with a small amount of the pulp surrounding them and are very slightly fermented in tanks or pits. This process of fermentation largely determines the flavor and their selling value.
After being dried thoroughly in the sun they are packed in bags and shipped to the northern markets. Some of the highest quality of beans come from Venezuela, Trinidad and Ecuador, but they are cultivated also in many of the West India islands, in tropical South America, the west coast of Africa, Ceylon, Java, and even in some of the islands of the Pacific.
The process of manufacture begins with roasting the beans to just the right degree to produce the best flavor, after blending the different varieties so as to insure a fullness and richness of taste. These two processes are most important in determining the quality of cocoa. The roasted beans are placed in a crusher and the shells are winnowed out, leaving the nibs. The shells are either thrown away, as we treat them, or are sold for a trifle to make a beverage which distantly resembles cocoa at a great cost of fuel.
The nibs are ground in large mills and immediately turn to a heavy liquid like molasses, owing to 50% of the beans being vegetable fat. In making cocoa, this liquid is poured into hydraulic presses and a considerable part of the cocoa butter pressed out. The dry cakes of powder remaining are pulverized, bolted and packed in cans for sale.
To make chocolate, the liquid above mentioned is molded in pans without abstraction of any cocoa butter and without the addition of any flavor or sugar. These cakes are the “Premium Chocolate” used in cooking, which used to be known as “Bitter Chocolate” because of its being unsweetened.
Milk Chocolate and Vanilla Sweet Chocolate, for eating purposes, are sweetened before being molded, and in the case of Lowney’s Milk Chocolate, has the richest cream from our own blooded Jersey cows added to it. The Vanilla Sweet Chocolate is sweetened and flavored with vanilla beans of the best quality, which we buy and grind ourselves.
The growth of the consumption of cocoa in its powdered form of recent years has been remarkable. It is superseding the old method of boiling for hours the cracked cocoa nibs at a great cost of fuel and with far less satisfactory results both as to flavor and as to the nutritive qualities of the cocoa.
Cocoa and chocolate differ from tea and coffee because they hold in solution one of the most nutritious foods known to man; whereas tea and coffee are simply infusions, that is to say, hot water plus the flavor, and have no nutritive value whatever except so far as they are mixed with sugar and cream.
Moreover, besides being a food, cocoa and chocolate differ from tea and coffee in giving the least possible stimulus, if any, to the nerves, and consequently are followed by the slightest, if any, reaction. Theobromin, the alkaloid which forms the essential flavor of cocoa and chocolate, although very similar chemically to the alkaloids, thein and caffeine, which are the natural flavoring elements of tea and coffee, differs from them in not being an excitant to the nerves.
You should remember in using cocoa and chocolate as beverages that they are strong foods and consequently just so much less other food should be taken when cocoa is used rather than other beverages. Otherwise, a case of overeating may ensue without your knowing what the matter is.
Many persons use hot beverages for two chief purposes: first, to wash their food down and save themselves the trouble of thorough mastication; and second, to get something hot into the stomach and revive the nerves. Such persons should remember that cocoa and chocolate are like soups in their nutritive value and not to be used like water, tea, or coffee.
Cocoa or chocolate with bread would be a sufficiently nutritive diet to prolong life indefinitely. In fact one woman in Martinique lived on chocolate exclusively for many years. This was possible because it contains all of the elements necessary to sustain human life. Under these circumstances, we urge that cocoa and chocolate shall be considered and treated as foods, as well as most delicious drinks.
For those who care for a scientific analysis of the cocoa bean, we will add the approximate figures of one chemist:
| Water | 3% |
| Protein | 15% |
| Fat | 50% |
| Starch | 13% |
| Other non-nitrogenous matter | 11½% |
| Woody fiber | 3% |
| Ash | 4% |
Based on such analyses as these, food experts accord to chocolate and cocoa a very high food value as producers of energy and heat. The ratio of fat and protein is so fortunately balanced to the needs of the human system that all experts agree on its being one of the most nutritious of known foods, and it is on this fact that we base our claim that it is cheap as a beverage, as well as most delicious. It has a fine delicate flavor of the tropics of which one never tires and is wholesome, strengthening, and harmless. It is especially suited to children, for whom it should be the only hot beverage provided.