The unfermented cocoa, also known as sun cocoa and island cocoa, is dried rapidly without fermenting. It is of a beautiful reddish brown color and a bitter astringent taste. The following are the principal varieties:
1. Brazilian (Para, Bahia) Cocoa.—Seeds smooth, wedge-shaped, flattened. One edge nearly straight, the other convex.
2. Cayenne Cocoa.—Quite hard, externally grayish brown, internally purplish red.
3. Antilles Cocoa (Island Cocoa).—Of this there are the following varieties: a, Trinidad cocoa, with large, flat, almost black brown seeds; b, Martinique cocoa, with elongated, flattened, reddish brown seeds; c, St. Domingo cocoa, with small, flattened, dark purplish brown seeds.
Cocoa requires considerable care in cultivation. A moist atmosphere and uniform temperature of about 24 to 28 degrees C., with considerable shade, is best suited. The tall variety of banana and the tree-like Erythrina Corallodendron are the more common shade plants. The plants are grown from seeds which begin to germinate in eight days. The trees begin to bear fruit in about four years. More usually eight to ten years elapse before any considerable fruit is borne. Two crops are collected annually. It is stated that there is on an average only one fruit to every 3,000 flowers.
Chocolate and cocoa are prepared by roasting the seeds, removing the husks and crushing between hot rollers, which liquefies the solid fat and forms a paste. To make chocolate sugar is added and flavored with vanilla and cinnamon. Sometimes a coloring substance is added. The paste is finally moulded into cakes varying in size and form. Chocolate is frequently adulterated with lard, starches, rice flour and other substances. Cheap grades are usually flavored with sassafras nuts, cloves and other spices. In the manufacture of cocoa the husks are usually included and mixed with a variable quantity of sugar, starch, flavoring substances, etc. The roasted, hulled and coarsely broken seeds are known as cocoa nibs, and this is the purest kind of cocoa. The powder made from the seeds after the oil has been thoroughly expressed is known as broma.
The seeds contain about 50 per cent of fat. In the manufacture of broma and common cocoa most of this is removed and is placed upon the market as cocoa butter. The more or less broken hulls are sold as cocoa shells, from which a chocolate-like drink is made by boiling in water and sweetening with sugar.
There is perhaps no food substance which is more universally liked than chocolate. Mothers have no small amount of trouble in hiding the household chocolate from the children. With the omnipresent penny-in-the-slot machine more pennies are credited to it than to the chewing gum. The housewife and baker use it very extensively with chocolate cake. The confectioner uses it very freely, to the great delight of children.
The principal use to which cocoa is put is in the preparation of a beverage. For this purpose enormous quantities of chocolate, cocoa, broma and hulls are consumed annually. The word “Theobroma” is derived from the Greek, meaning drink for the gods. The drink is prepared by thoroughly triturating the desired amount of chocolate, cocoa or broma with a small quantity of water, then stirring this into the necessary quantity of boiling milk or water and boiling for a few minutes with constant stirring. The oil present gives the drink great nutritive value. It is also slightly stimulating, owing to the presence of an alkaloid theobromine which is closely similar in its properties to theine and caffeine, the active constituents of tea and coffee. The drink does not agree with some individuals, because the large amount of oil present causes indigestion. It is also highly probable that the indigestion or dyspepsia is due to the minute fragments of roasted cell-walls of the seeds, which are not only indigestible, but irritate the secreting mucous cells lining the inner surface of the stomach.
Cocoa butter, which resembles tallow in consistency and appearance, is used in medical and pharmaceutical practice as a salve, or pomade, for external application in eruptive diseases, as scarlet fever, etc., etc. Cocoa also finds extensive use in medical practice, though it has no marked curative properties. Cocoa from which the oil has been thoroughly expressed (broma) makes an excellent drink for convalescents. It is used to disguise the taste of disagreeable medicines, etc.