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.