World Chocolate Day is celebrated on July 7 because it is believed that cacao was first brought to Europe in 1550. However, chocolate has a long history, dating back 5,300 years. The Mayo-Chinchipe people of Ecuador’s upper Amazon found the earliest evidence of cocoa domestication in their vessels and pots, according to a recent paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Cacao was grown by the Maya civilization in Central and South America around 400 AD.
A foamy drink known as xocoatl, which translates to “bitter water,” was made by grinding dried cocoa beans in water and adding cinnamon and pepper. The Aztec word xocoatl is where the word “chocolate” got its start. Chocolate was valued for its medicinal and invigorating properties rather than its flavor at that time. The Aztec empire expanded throughout Mesoamerica later in 1200 AD. The Aztecs believed that the god Quetzalcoatl bestowed cocoa trees on them because cocoa beans were so valuable at the time that they used them as currency. The Aztec emperor Montezuma, according to legend, was particularly interested in the chocolate beverage, which he consumed in large quantities throughout the day. Europe meets chocolate
In the 1500s, Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés set out to bring cacao beans to Spain after seeing how highly valued the strange fruit was in Mexico. At first, the Spanish were only interested in the beans’ economic value and thought that the Aztecs’ chocolate drink was disgusting and that their rites were heresy. Chocolate, on the other hand, was brought to Europe as a beverage with significant nutritional and medicinal value as a result of frequent Spanish-American colonial trade. When Anna of Austria wed King Louis XIII in 1615, she made chocolate famous in France. It spread to the upper echelons of European society from Paris, where it became a drink of the aristocracy and a badge of status. Theobroma cacao, which literally translates to “food of the gods,” was given to the cocoa beans by Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné in 1753. The renaissance of chocolate The Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten and his father, Casparus, invented the cocoa press in 1828, ushering in a new era for chocolate. It removed the roasted cacao beans’ cocoa butter, resulting in a dry cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder and mixed with other ingredients. Chocolate became a confectionery ingredient as a result, making it significantly less expensive.
