I replied laughingly: “This cup of cocoa is so good, that I certainly would try to seize the Philippines for it.”
Filippa’s mother and father both bowed and said I was complimentary, like a diplomat.
Then I continued: “I am glad the Philippines are now ours, and yours too, because our money can help to develop the wonderful tropical products which do not grow in our colder America. I wish you would explain something about cocoa and coffee, which we prize very much and which we send our ships a long way to secure.”
Fil’s father, who was a planter of wide acres, replied:
“The cocoa bean and the coconut are two very different plants. Do not confuse them. The cocoa bean, out of which you grind cocoa powder and chocolate for a drink, for bonbons, and for puddings, comes out of a fruit shaped like a large red cucumber. This fruit grows on a tender bush, which must be shaded by a thick banana palm. In each fruit are twenty of these seeds, or cocoa beans.
“They have hard skins, and are very bitter and stimulating. When eaten, they excite the heart, and thus make a person feel active and alive. Soldiers and athletes eat them, to relieve fatigue. As soon as the fruit is gathered, the beans must be dried in the sun, or be roasted. The cocoa bean is very oily. To make cocoa, the oil is extracted, when the beans are ground into a paste. To make chocolate, the oil is not extracted.”
“I never ate a cocoa bean which was sweet; but a chocolate-drop is sweet,” said Filippa, who had bought chocolate-drops in the candy stores.
Her father explained: “We add sugar and vanilla, to the brown cocoa bean paste.”
“Just think of practically growing chocolate bonbons on a tree, beneath the window of your nipa huts, in these wonderful Philippine Islands,” I added, and every one smiled.
“It is really true, when one adds the sugar,” remarked the Padre.