WOMEN GRINDING CHOCOLATE.
From Squier "Nicaragua"
A certain atmosphere of dreamy intellectuality is associated with coffee, so that the roasting of it is felt to be a romantic occupation. The same poetic atmosphere surrounded the manufacture of drinking chocolate in the early days: the writers who revealed the secrets of its preparation were conscious that they were giving man a new æsthetic delight and the subject is treated lovingly and lingeringly. One, Pietro Metastasio, went so far as to write a "cantata" describing its manufacture. He describes the grinding as being done by a vigorous man, and truly, to grind by hand is a very laborious operation, which happily in more recent times has been performed by the use of power-driven mills.
Operations on a large scale followed the founding of Fry and Sons at Bristol in 1728, and of Lombart, "la plus ancienne chocolaterie de France," in Paris in 1760. In Germany the first chocolate factory was erected at Steinhunde in 1756, under the patronage of Prince Wilhelm, whilst in America the well-known firm of Walter Baker and Co. began in a small way in 1765. From the methods adopted in these factories have gradually developed the modern processes which I am about to describe.
MODERN PRACTICE.
As the early stages in the manufacture of cocoa and of chocolate are often identical, the processes which are common to both are first described, and then some individual consideration is given to each.
(a) Arrival at the Factory.
The cacao is largely stored in warehouses, from which it is removed as required. It has remarkable keeping properties, and can be kept in a good store for several years without loss of quality. Samples of cacao beans in glass bottles have been found to be in perfect condition after thirty years. Some factories have stores in which stand thousands of bags of cacao drawn from many ports round the equator. There is something very pleasing about huge stacks of bags of cacao seen against the luminous white walls of a well-lighted store. The symmetry of their construction, and the continued repetition of the same form, are never better shown than when the men, climbing up the sides of a stack against which they look small, unbuild the mighty heap, the bags falling on to a continuous band which carries them jauntily out of the store.
