(Chocolate)
(c) Sandra I. Smith
May not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author
Describe a food as rich, creamy, and decadent, and most people will think of chocolate. Not surprisingly, chocolate is a favorite flavor worldwide. Aside from its own delicious attributes, it combines with all other flavors.
Chocolate's official name, Theobroma cacao, translates to "food of the gods." Few people will argue with that description.
Chocolate represents love to most of us, and there's good reason for that. It contains phenylethylamine, a chemical that's also created in the brain when love stirs us. Small amounts of theobromine and caffeine in chocolate serve as stimulants and help relieve mild depression, while the carbohydrates it contains provide quick energy. And if all that wasn't enough, its high fat content is soothing. Accordingly, few of us turn down an offer of chocolate.
Chocolate starts as a bean on the cacao tree, an evergreen native to Central and South America. Early Aztecs fermented and roasted the beans, then ground them into a liquid from which they made a bitter drink. After sampling the drink in 1519, Cortez took beans back to Spain with him. The Spaniards added sweeteners, cinnamon, and vanilla according to a secret formula they developed. Recipes for chocolate eventually spread to the rest of Europe and England, where it flourished as a treat reserved for the very wealthy. They patronized chocolate houses much like our contemporary coffee houses.
The English began adding milk to their drinking chocolate in the 1700s. The custom spread to the colonies, with the first chocolate factory established in Massachusetts in 1765.
Although non-alcoholic, ground cacao beans are called chocolate liquor. The liquor does, however, contain more than 50 percent fat. If it isn't processed further, it's sold as baking, or bitter, chocolate.
The next step is to remove the cocoa butter and pulverize what remains into a powder. The powder is then combined with other ingredients, including sugar, to make chocolate.
Van Houten, a Dutchman, invented the cocoa press, which eventually made chocolate affordable to the masses. Milk chocolate was first marketed in 1876 by Daniel Peter, a Swiss candymaker. He had to wait until after Henry Nestle developed condensed milk, as the high water content of regular milk ruined the chocolate. Another Swiss, Rodolphe Lindt, added cocoa butter back to the chocolate powder in the late 1800s, to make a chocolate bar for eating.
Milton Hershey, a name synonymous with chocolate in the U. S., started his company in 1894.
U.S. laws require chocolate to contain at least 15 percent chocolate liquor and cocoa butter; bittersweet (dark) chocolate must include a minimum of 35 percent of chocolate liquor; and milk chocolate requires at least 10 percent liquor. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, but not cocoa powder. Imitation and cooking chocolate are usually made with vegetable oil, rather than cocoa butter.
Because it doesn't go rancid easily, cocoa butter is in demand for other foods, toiletries, and medicines. Brownies, French silk pie, fudge, s'mores, devil's food cake, chocolate chip cookies, truffles, hot cocoa: there are dozens of ways to consume the food of the gods. Go ahead--indulge in your favorite tonight. Nothing else will make you feel quite as good as something chocolate.
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