Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes

by Maria Parloa; Janet McKenzie Hill

"In regard to the others, the remedy is an easy one: they should reinforce their breakfast with a pâté, a cutlet, or a kidney, moisten the whole with a good draught of soconusco chocolate, and thank God for a stomach of such superior activity.

"This gives me an opportunity to make an observation whose accuracy may be depended upon.

"After a good, complete, and copious breakfast, if we take, in addition, a cup of well-made chocolate, digestion will be perfectly accomplished in three hours, and we may dine whenever we like. Out of zeal for science, and by dint of eloquence, I have induced many ladies to try this experiment. They all declared, in the beginning, that it would kill them; but they have all thriven on it and have not failed to glorify their teacher.

"The people who make constant use of chocolate are the ones who enjoy the most steady health, and are the least subject to a multitude of little ailments which destroy the comfort of life; their plumpness is also more equal. These are two advantages which every one may verify among his own friends, and wherever the practice is in use."

In corroboration of M. Brillat-Savarin's statement as to the value of chocolate as an aid to digestion, we may quote from one of Mme. de Sévigné's letters to her daughter:

"I took chocolate night before last to digest my dinner, in order to have a good supper. I took some yesterday for nourishment, so as to be able to fast until night. What I consider amusing about chocolate is that it acts according to the wishes of the one who takes it."

Chocolate appears to have been highly valued as a remedial agent by the leading physicians of that day. Christoph Ludwig Hoffman wrote a treatise entitled, "Potus Chocolate," in which he recommended it in many diseases, and instanced the case of Cardinal Richelieu, who, he stated, was cured of general atrophy by its use.

A French officer who served in the West Indies for a period of fifteen years, during the early part of the last century, wrote, as the result of his personal observations, a treatise on "The Natural History of Chocolate, Being a distinct and Particular Account of the Cacao Tree, its Growth and Culture, and the Preparation, Excellent Properties, and Medicinal Virtues of its Fruit," which received the approbation of the Regent of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, and which was translated and published in London, in 1730. After describing the different methods of raising and curing the fruit and preparing it for food (which it is not worth while to reproduce here, as the methods have essentially changed since that time), he goes on to demonstrate, as the result of actual experiment, that chocolate is a substance "very temperate, very nourishing, and of easy digestion; very proper to repair the exhausted spirits and decayed strength; and very suitable to preserve the health and prolong the lives of old men....

"I could produce several instances," he says, "in favor of this excellent nourishment; but I shall content myself with two only, equally certain and decisive, in proof of its goodness. The first is an experiment of chocolate's being taken for the only nourishment—made by a surgeon's wife of Martinico. She had lost, by a very deplorable accident, her lower jaw, which reduced her to such a condition that she did not know how to subsist. She was not capable of taking anything solid, and not rich enough to live upon jellies and nourishing broths. In this strait she determined to take three dishes of chocolate, prepared after the manner of the country, one in the morning, one at noon, and one at night. There chocolate is nothing else but cocoa kernels dissolved in hot water, with sugar, and seasoned with a bit of cinnamon. This new way of life succeeded so well that she has lived a long while since, more lively and robust than before this accident.

"I had the second relation from a gentleman of Martinico, and one of my friends not capable of a falsity. He assured me that in his neighborhood an infant of four months old unfortunately lost his nurse, and its parents not being able to put it to another, resolved, through necessity, to feed it with chocolate. The success was very happy, for the infant came on to a miracle, and was neither less healthy nor less vigorous than those who are brought up by the best nurses.