The
Story of Chocolate
By A. Hyatt Verrill
WHEN the
Spaniards first landed in Mexico
and Central America they
found the native Indians using a
drink which the Spaniards had never
before tasted. The Aztecs called it chocolati, and today we call it
chocolate but very few who eat chocolate or drink cocoa ever stop to think how
it is made.
If you have once seen a cacao
tree,—for cocoa and chocolate both come from this same tree,—you will never
fail to recognize the tree again,
for there is no other tree like it. It is a very pretty tree, with
rich green leaves, which are bronze red or purple when young, but the queerest thing about it is the way in which the
flowers and fruit grow. Instead of budding from the
ends of twigs, the cacao flowers
sprout directly from the rough bark
of the limbs and trunk, and the fruits look very funny hanging everywhere upon the bark as if tacked on. The cacao fruits are rough
and brightly colored with purple, red, or yellow, and a tree, covered with the yellow fruits or pods, looks as if it were
bearing squashes.
Within the
pods is a mass of white slimy pulp, and in this are many brown seeds or beans.
The ripe pods are very carefully cut from the
trees,—for if broken or torn off, the
trees are injured—and, as fast as cut, they
are gathered in baskets and carried
to some spot where they are dumped
in piles to be opened. This is done by men with big sharp knives called
machetes (mah-chay'-tayz), and as each pod is split open the
pulp and seeds within are dumped into trays or baskets. As soon as a basket is
full of the pulp it is carried to the "sweating-house," where the pulp is dumped into boxes with holes in the bottoms and which are covered over with leaves
or matting. After a few days they
are changed to another box, where they are left for two or three days more, by which
time the soft, white pulp has
entirely disappeared and the beans
have changed to a rich purple color. This process is called "fermenting,"
and a great deal of care is necessary in fermenting the
beans, for, if badly or carelessly done, the
cocoa or chocolate will be poor and the
beans will not bring a high price.
When the
seeds are properly fermented, they
are spread upon huge trays to dry, and as the
least rain or dampness injures the
beans, the drying trays are usually
made with wheels running on tracks, so that the
trays with their loads of beans may
be quickly run under a shed in case of a shower. As the
beans are drying in the bright
sunshine they are raked about by men
who walk among the beans barefooted
and shuffle and tread them about to
smooth and polish them. On many of the smaller estates the
beans are dried on cowhides, placed on the
ground, or in trays placed beside the
road, and one may often see chickens, dogs, sheep, cattle, and children
scratching and playing about in the
beans. This seems like a very dirty method of drying anything which is to be
used for food, and many people who see the
beans with animals or barefooted black men walking about in the trays, think that cocoa or chocolate must be
very filthy. But this is not the
case, for, when the beans reach the factory or mill to be made into cocoa or
chocolate, the outer skins with all the dirt are removed. The cocoa and chocolate we buy
in the stores are made in big
factories and go through numerous machines and many processes, but in the countries where the
cocoa trees grow the people make the chocolate by pounding the
beans in a mortar. Then they add
sugar and a little cinnamon or vanilla, and mix the
ground beans into paste with water and roll them
into little sticks or cakes. When these
are dissolved in water and milk, they
make a very rich but nourishing drink, exactly the
same as the Spaniards first tasted
in Mexico nearly half a thousand years ago. Nowadays cocoa is grown in so many
places and in such large quantities that it is not as valuable as it was once.
In former days in the West Indies the theft
of cocoa was punishable by death, and in some countries the
cocoa beans were used as money.
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