VISIT TO A CHOCOLATE MANUFACTORY.
Birmingham, so says the Times, is famous for 'lacquered shams;' and any one who has sojourned for a while in the huge, smoky toy-shop will add—for not a few genuine realities! To walk from factory to factory, from workshop to workshop, and view the extraordinary mechanical contrivances, the ingenious adaptations of means to ends, to say nothing of the eager spirit of application manifested by the busy population, produces an impression on the mind of no common character. Besides which, the town itself, so ill-arranged and ugly, is a spectacle; and in the people that inhabit the dismal streets, the visitor may find studies in morality as well as manufactures.
We have something to say about one of the realities alluded to above—not the making of pens, or tea-pots, or papier-maché; but of something in which breakfasts are implicated all over the kingdom—the making of cocoa and chocolate as carried on by Messrs Cadbury, Brothers. These gentlemen having kindly invited us to a sight of their establishment, we took the opportunity of witnessing their processes for converting raw produce into an acceptable article of diet, aided by the ample explanations of one of the partners. Such a manufacture seems out of place among bronze and brass and hardware, but the factory stands away from the fuliginous quarter, on the verge of Edgbaston—that Belgravia of Birmingham—where sunshine and blue sky are not perpetually hidden by smoke. What we saw there is worth the telling, as we hope to shew.
Here, however, we must say a few words concerning the raw material. It appears that the Spaniards were the first Europeans who tasted chocolate; it was part of their spoil in the conquest of Mexico. Bernardo de Castile, who accompanied Cortez, describing one of Montezuma's banquets, says: 'They brought in among the dishes above fifty great jars made of good cacao, with its froth, and drank it, the women serving them with a great deal of respect;' and similar jars were served to the guards and attendants 'to the number of two thousand at least.' The Spaniards enjoyed the rare beverage, and with a slight transformation of the native Mexican term Chacoc-atl, they introduced chocolate, as they named it, into Spain, monopolising the article for a time, and it was only by slow degrees that the knowledge of it spread into other parts of Europe. Gage, an old traveller who had visited the tropics, writing in 1630, remarks: 'Our English and Hollanders make little use of it, when they take a prize at sea, as not knowing the secret virtue and quality of it for the good of the stomach.' In the reign of Charles II., it was so much esteemed in England that Dr Stubbe published a book, entitled The Indian Nectar, or a Discourse concerning Chocolata, &c., giving a history of the article, and many curious notions respecting its 'secret virtue;' and recommending his readers to buy it of one Mortimer, 'an honest, though poor man,' who lived in East Smithfield, and sold the best kind at 6s. 6d. the pound, and commoner sorts for about half that price. Of course, none but the wealthy could drink it; indeed, we find writers of the past century alluding to it as an aristocratic beverage.
Linnæus was so fond of chocolate, that he called it food for the gods in the distinguishing name which he gave to the tree that produces it—Theobroma cacao. The tree is a native of tropical America, but is now largely cultivated in other parts of the world. It grows from twelve to sixteen feet high, with evergreen leaves, and fruit of a deep orange colour when ripe, resembling a cucumber in shape, and containing from ten to thirty seeds. These seeds are the cacao-nuts or cocoa-nibs of commerce; in the trade, they are commonly spoken of as cocoa-nuts. The best kind are brought from Trinidad; and such has been the effect of lowering the duty, which was formerly 4s. per pound, to one penny, the present charge, that the quantity imported in the year ending January 5, 1852, amounted to 6,773,960 pounds. Among the colonial produce shewn in the Great Exhibition, cocoa-nuts held a conspicuous place; and it ought to be understood, that from such as these cocoa and chocolate are made—both from the same article.
To return to the factory. We first saw a storehouse filled with bags of nuts or nibs, two hundredweight in each, the only kinds used on the premises being those from Trinidad and Grenada. In an adjoining room, imbedded in a huge mass of brickwork, are four cylindrical ovens rotating slowly over a coke-fire, each containing a hundredweight of nuts, which were undergoing a comfortable process of roasting, as evidenced by an agreeable odour thrown off, and a loss of 10 per cent. in weight at the close of the operation, which lasts half an hour. Thus, in a day of ten hours, the four ovens will roast two tons of nuts, the prime mover being a twenty-horse steam-engine. The sight was one that would have gladdened Count Rumford's heart, for the cylinders and their fittings comprised all the economical principles of his roaster—certainty of effect without waste of fuel.
The next step is to crack or break the nuts in what is called the 'kibbling-mill.' The roasting has made them quite crisp, and with a few turns of the whizzing apparatus, they are divested of their husk, which is driven into a bin by a ceaseless blast from a furious fan; while the kernels, broken into small pieces, fall, perfectly clean, into a separate compartment, where their granulated form and rich glossy colour give them a very tempting appearance. The husk is repacked in the empty bags, and exported to Ireland, where it is sold at a low price to the humbler classes, who extract from it a beverage which has all the flavour of cocoa, if not all its virtues.
Thus prepared, the mass of broken nut is ready for more intimate treatment, which is carried on in a large room where shafts, wheels, and straps keep a number of strange-looking machines in busy movement. Some of these are double-cylinders, highly heated by a flow of steam between the inner and outer cases—an arrangement by which any degree of temperature can be produced in the interior. Inside of cacti works an armed iron-breaker, which, as soon as a quantity of the cracked nuts is introduced, begins to rotate, and, by the combined influence of heat and pressure, liberates the oil of the cocoa bean, and soon reduces the mass to a liquid which flows, 'thick and slab,' into a pan placed to receive it, leisurely as a stream of half-frozen treacle. In this state it is ready for grinding between the millstones, to which it is successively transferred, being poured into 'hoppers,' which, like the cylinders, are heated by steam. The cocoa flows rapidly from the stones in a fluid smooth as oil; but it is the best kinds only that are favoured with the most trituration, the commoner sorts being more summarily dismissed. At the time of our visit, a pair of new stones were in course of erection, which of themselves will turn off a ton of chocolate per day.