Botany of Chocolate

Nature & Culture

1. Natural Origins
2. Indigenous Treasure
3. A New Taste in the Old World
4. Global Impact

Talking about Cacao, Cocoa, and Chocolate: We can find these words confusing.  Cacao is the general name for the plant (Theobroma cacao) and the raw products (fruit and seed.)  

Cocoa refers to three different products.  It can be the processed edible seed (also called cocoa beans or cocoa nibs).  Those seed, once processed, are ground to a uniform cocoa mass (termed cocoa liquor in some literature), which is also called Cocoa.  Using pressure, manufacturers extract the fat (the cocoa butter) and produce a cake of cocoa solids that is ground to a powder we also call Cocoa.  

The word Chocolate relates to the entire range of products that contain cocoa, and is actually defined differently around the world.  In the United States, anything we call chocolate must have at least 5% cocoa liquor (both cocoa solids and cocoa butter).

 Over the last two decades I’ve given many talks on chocolate, as well as conducted a series of tastings and workshops for cooks and candy-lovers.  Having taken a range of approaches to the topic, I’ve settled on the idea that the most useful introduction involves discussing chocolate history while tasting samples that relate to moments in the story.  That version of my lectures is what is transcribed in this Section.

To work your way through this presentation, make a few purchases and assemble some supplies:

• Chocolate nibs.  Nibs are pure, unadulterated chocolate – pieces of roasted cacao seed.  They can be found at a good whole-grains emporium with a nice offering of baking components.  Some chocolatiers offer nibs in small tins for tasting. (Do not purchased “flavored” or sweetened nibs.  You need pure chocolate here).
• Two to three samples of dark chocolate (no milk included).  I use Lindt Excellence, which makes bars (they call them slabs) with chocolate solids of 70%, 85%, and 90%.
• A bar of good milk chocolate.
• A cutting board (or bowl) and knife.

Natural Origins:

The pods are thick-skinned, a bit leathery, and filled with large seed (about the size of almonds). Each seed has a tasty, thick, fleshy-white pulp coating (called an aril).  You could happily gnaw off the aril and throw the seed away.  But the seed turns out to be the treasure – after some processing.

Processed Cacao seed are called beans, or nibs, but when freshly harvested and cleaned, they taste nothing like chocolate.  While still fresh, the seed must be killed and aged through a process of fermentation in order to develop chemical products that create the necessary flavor profile.  This involves bacterial breakdown of that tasty, pulpy aril  

Following fermentation, the seed are cleaned, dried and roasted.  Most serious chocolate firms purchase raw beans (the processed but raw seed) in order to control roasting times and temperatures, which determines much about the final flavor.  Once roasted, Cacao seed are separated from their thin husks (seed coats) and you have pure, edible chocolate beans (nibs).  Crushed, we still call the pieces nibs – because they have every component in the prepared seed.  

Indigenous Treasure:

Nibs approximate chocolate the Aztecs knew, a natural product with plenty of flavor and rich in fat.  But as with the nibs,  there was nothing sweet about Aztecan chocolate.  The fat and solids provide a rich base for a beverage, one that combines with many other natural flavors to make an energy-laden, savory, and satisfying drink. 

Since the roasted seed can be stored and transported easily, they were traded, and it turns out cacao nibs had considerable exchange value for Central America’s indigenous cultures.  Check out year 1502 in TimeLine (Chapter 9) to read an entry from the log of Columbus’s 4th voyage reporting the handling of cacao seed (which the Spanish referred to as almonds) by Native Americans.  Then read the entry for 1545, citing a report which informs us that 30 cacao nibs could pay for a small rabbit.

Early Europeans visiting the New World did not uniformly appreciate this savory concoction.  Referring to Chocolate in 1575, Milanese voyager and writer Girolamo Benzoni noted in his History of the New World: “It seemed more a drink for pigs, than a drink for humanity.  I was in this country for more than a year, and never wanted to taste it, and whenever I passed a settlement, some Indian would offer me a drink of it, and would be amazed when I would not accept, going away laughing.  But then, as there was a shortage of wine, so as not to be always drinking water, I did like the others.  The taste is somewhat bitter, it satisfies and refreshes the body, but does not inebriate, and it is the best and most expensive merchandise, according to the Indians of that country.”   

Imagine grinding and combining the nibs you are tasting with piquant peppers or heady cinnamon-like spices, whipped with water into a thick, frothy, somewhat oily power drink.   It’s one of those things you have to develop a taste for….  

A New Taste in the Old World:

The new taste developed most certainly, for Chocolate acquired a following among the wealthy Spanish who lived in the Americas.  Acceptance turned to endearment through a 1569 decision by Pope Pius V that  chocolate (as a beverage) could be consumed during periods of fasting.  Interest in this bitter energy drink made its way from New Spain (Mexico) to Old Spain (Spain), and migrated throughout Europe as royal marriages merged customs of courts and countries. 

In European larders, new flavors were brought to the party and chocolate began its relationship with sugar (which at that time was a rare and expensive “spice”.)  A 1644 European recipe by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma specified: 100 cacao beans, 2 chilis, a handful of anise, ear flower, 2 mecasuchiles, 1 vanilla, 2 oz cinnamon, 12 almonds and as many hazelnuts, 1\2 lb sugar, achiote to taste.  Mixed in hot water, this concoction was beaten to a froth.

By the end of the 17th Century, Chocolate joined Coffee and Tea to form a trio of trendy beverages.  Searching the internet, you’ll find reference to Britain’s Red Lion Pub, which served chocolate based on a 1692 recipe including cacao beans, sugar, cinnamon, powdered cloves, and Indian pepper.  The drink was deemed to cure everything, from impotence to failed conception:

"Nor need the women longer grieve,
Who spend their oil yet not conceive,
For 'tis a help immediate,
If such but lick of Chocolate"

Up to this point, people were generally consuming Chocolate as a beverage, and the flavor remained as a bitter chocolate base amplified with other very strong flavors and sweetened with sugar.  That brew is not the hot chocolate of today; there was no milk in the Red Lion recipe.  

Though drinking Chocolate was the primary use, other culinary developments were on the horizon.  In 1659, a French confectioner was granted a patent to sell chocolate in lozenge form.  We find reference to chocolate products throughout the 18th century, as cooks began to crush, grind, and dissolve nibs in baked goods.  In a 1779 letter from prison, the Marquis de Sade requested a “cake with icing, but I want it to be chocolate and as black inside from chocolate as the devil’s ass is black from smoke,  and the icing to be the same.”  

More tempting Chocolate candy bars were making an appearance, with the earliest clear evidence of candy in England dating to Fry’s (Bristol) manufacture of sweetened bars in 1847.  That product seems to have incorporated soluble cocoa powder – which had been introduced by C. J. van Houten in 1828.  With cocoa powder available, and given ready access to cane sugar, we have the recipe for significant shift in the ways people consume chocolate.  Though early chocolate bars were not the smooth confections we expect today, continued experimentation led to market-changing developments in the second half of the 19th Century.   A significant refinement came in 1879 when Rudolphe Lindt introduced “conching” – which reduces the grittiness through prolonged stone grinding that dissolves granules and develops greater flavor 

Sugar is second in the list (after chocolate components), at about 30%, less that you’ll find in most chocolate confections. As the third ingredient, you see the addition of cocoa butter (fat).  That tells you this is good quality, because chocolate candies can be made using other types of fats, such as palm oil, which are cheaper and could allow the candy to remain solid at higher temperatures.

Once you open the package, just look at the bar.  It should be beautifully lustrous.  In fact, sheen is one of the criteria used in chocolate tastings.  The edges will be crisp, and when cut (or bitten), there ought to be a clean snap.  Once tasted, the texture should be velvety smooth, a characteristic not possible until Lindt developed conching.

The desirable, characteristic sheen, snap, and texture also tell you the chocolate is well “tempered” and has not been mishandled.  We borrow the word temper from metallurgy, which often involves heating, cooling, and handling steps that generate the best internal crystalline structure – so the metal holds an edge and retains both strength and flexibility.  

Chocolate, as it cools and sets, also assumes a crystalline structure.  In fact, because it is a complex mixture, chocolate can assume any of six different crystalline types.  Of those, only one crystallinity produces beautiful candies and coverings that set up nicely, have the best texture (“mouth feel”), and take on the proper color and luster.  If you ever open a chocolate bar that has a flat, grainy, or whitish surface, you have candy that may be old, or was kept at the wrong temperature, or was simply inferior from the start. 

The beautifully-tempered bar you just opened, if treated very cautiously, can be made to play some tricks.  For example, if you melt it very gently, just to the point of being soft enough to stir, you can mold the chocolate in shapes, or coat other treats, such as chocolate ganache, or strawberries while keeping the temper.  In just barely melting the bar, you will probably retain enough proper crystals so that the chocolate will retain the right structure when it solidifies.  And you can make lovely morsels that seem professional. 

The marriage of chocolate and sugar left older suiters behind.  Flavorings, such as cinnamon and hazelnut cream remain regionally popular, but were lost as chocolate moved to the desert realm.  Vanilla, as you saw when reading ingredients for the Lindt chocolate, made the entire trip, in that this flavoring is also a gift of the Aztecs and was used with chocolate well before Europeans encountered the New World.  Native to Central America, vanilla flavoring comes from the fruit of Vanilla orchids which are sweated and dried to develop the characteristic flavor.  It is a wonderful, somewhat floral scent so commonly used in chocolate products that I fear most people have never tasted chocolate without added vanilla.  In my own cooking of chocolate cakes and candies, I leave out the inevitable vanilla, and find the chocolate taste more intense.

To bring this full circuit, if available, taste the Lindt 100%, which is exactly what it says.  This is pure chocolate liquor, a refined version of the nibs tested earlier.  There’s neither sugar nor vanilla.  You’ll note this is far from what you might consider a “candy.”  

In general, Americans prefer a completely different confection, a “milk” chocolate.  Late in the 19th century, around the same time Lindt introduced conching to create smoother textures,, chocolate met another partner – milk.  Henri Nestlé and Daniel Peter began combining sweet chocolate with condensed milk in 1875, an innovation greatly amplified in 1879 when the company introduced the use of powdered milk.  The creation of smooth, sweet milk chocolate sealed the deal for the public, leading to a difference you can both see and taste.  Thus we end the sampling by opening and tasting a bar of milk chocolate.

Inevitably, when I steer the conversation and tastings in this direction, with the milk chocolate directly following the dark chocolate, some participants find that the milk chocolate, in this context, tastes like sugar or caramel rather than chocolate.  

If you are tasting the Lindt, it has over 30% cocoa solids and is truly a “chocolate.”   That is especially  true in the US.  Here, the Food and Drug Administration requires a “milk chocolate” to contain at least 10% chocolate liquor, which translates as about 4.5% chocolate solids.  When such a modest proportion of the candy is really chocolate, small wonder Americans are typically undecided regarding the taste. 

Global Impact: 

Chocolate is consumed throughout the world, but remains a product of the lowland tropics.  As with many tropical crops, the major areas of production are far from where the plant is native.  Today, at least one third of the world’s chocolate is farmed in Ivory Coast, but this is not especially a happy story.  Scanning the internet, you will find that nearly a third of Ivory Coast children under 15 work in agriculture, mostly in cacao walks (the term for cacao orchards).   In the broader region of West Africa, it is estimated that nearly 2 million children are involved in cacao farming.

That doesn’t mean all chocolate is tainted, but suggests people should take great interest in examining fair trade programs, to make certain they are fair. 

In 2015, about 5 million metric tons of cacao were produced.  So what happened to it all?  According to a 2105 article published by Forbes, eight of the top ten Chocolate-consuming countries (measured in quantity per capita) are European with Australia and the US rounding out the total.  These countries are not significant producers of Chocolate.  

In 2015, three nations (Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Indonesia produced about 2/3 of the world’s cocoa beans.  And neither these countries, nor any others of the top twenty chocolate producing countries were among the top ten consuming countries.  Despite its global availability, this reminds us that Chocolate remains a luxury, temperate-climate product. 

Moreover, because much of the character of Chocolate relates to roasting, blending, and handling, and that process is handled by manufacturers, countries that produce the beans turn out raw products only, which bring very low profit margins.  Cacao provides income and significant trade exports for several tropical countries, but on a pound-for-pound basis, Chocolate is overwhelmingly an American and European product and indulgence. 

TimeLine entries related to Chocolate:

1502 In an account of Columbus’s 4th voyage (written by his son, Ferdinand), the explorers encountered and captured a Mayan trading canoe on 15 August.  Among the goods carried by the traders were seeds of cacao (called almonds), which seemed to hold great value:  “For their provisions they had such roots and grains as are eaten in Hispaniola [these would have been maize and manioc], and a sort of wine made out of maize which resembled English beer; and many of those almonds which in New Spain [Mexico] are used for money.  They seemed to hold these almonds at a great price; for when they were brought on board ship together with their goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen.”  

1505 Enslaved Africans were first brought to the New World.  Trade in slaves would steadily rise, driven at first by gold mining, the harvest of natural resources, and increasing agricultural demand.  In the end, at least 9.5 million African slaves were brought to the New World, fully 2.5 million of whom were deployed in the Caribbean where they worked substantially in the sugar industry.  For 360 years slavery was the key labor source for New World sugar production. (Mintz in Viola & Margolis, 1991)  By another breakdown, approximately 13,000,000 slaves were exported from Africa between 1440 and 1870.  Of those people, about 6,000,000 were deployed initially to work in sugar plantations, 2,000,000 to coffee, 1,000,000 to mining, 1,000,000 for domestic labor, 500,000 for cotton fields, 250,000 for cacao walks, and 250,000 for construction.  (Thomas, 1999)

1545 A Nahuatl document of commodity prices in Tlaxcala estimates values based on cacao beans: one good turkey hen is worth 10 full cacao beans, or 120 shrunken cacao beans; a turkey egg is worth 3 cacao beans;  a small rabbit is worth 30; an avocado newly picked is worth 3 cacao beans; one large tomato will be equivalent to a cacao bean; a tamale is exchanged for a cacao bean.  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1569 Pius V determined that chocolate, though nourishing, could be classified as a beverage.  Thus chocolate could be taken during periods of fasting. In 1662, Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio determined that though nourishing, beverages, including wine and chocolate, are not to be considered foods.   (Bailleux, et al, 1996)

1572 Hernández work on the natural history of the New World [in Mexico from 1572-1577, see publication in 1651] led to his detailing of recipes for use of chocolate (cacahuatl) among the Aztecs.  Their chocolate was highly spiced, with the three principal additions being: hueinacaztli (a petal from the Annonaceous tree Cymbopetalum penduliflorum), tlilxochitl (the processed “bean” of the orchid, Vanilla planifolia), and mecaxochitl (the inflorescence of Piper sanctum, a relative of black pepper.)  In line with contemporary European concern over the humor and the nature of medicines and foods, Hernandez classified cacao as “temperate in nature,” but somewhat “cold and humid.”   (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1575 Milanese voyager and writer Girolamo Benzoni noted in his History of the New World (in reference to chocolate): “It seemed more a drink for pigs, than a drink for humanity.  I was in this country for more than a year, and never wanted to taste it, and whenever I passed a settlement, some Indian would offer me a drink of it, and would be amazed when I would not accept, going away laughing.  But then, as there was a shortage of wine, so as not to be always drinking water, I did like the others.  The taste is somewhat bitter, it satisfies and refreshes the body, but does not inebriate, and it is the best and most expensive merchandise, according to the Indians of that country.”

1578 Bernal Díaz del Castillo observed the devastation of native peoples in New Spain: “Let us turn to the province of Soconusco which lies between Guatemala and Oaxaca.  I say that in the year 25 [1525] I was traveling through it over 8 or 10 days, and it used to be peopled by more than 15,000 inhabitants [households], and they had their houses and very good orchards of cacao trees, and the whole province was a garden of Cacao trees and was very pleasant, and now in the year 578 [1578] it is so desolate and abandoned that there are no more than twelve hundred inhabitants in it.”  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1585 The first commercial shipment of cacao seed arrived in Spain, having been sent from Veracruz.  (Bailleux, et al, 1996)

1590 José de Acosta noted, in his Natural and Moral History, that: “The main benefit of this cacao is a beverage which they make called Chocolate, which is a crazy thing valued in that country.  It disgusts those who are not used to it, for it has a foam on top, or a scum-like bubbling. …It is a valued drink which the Indians offer to the lords who come or pass through their land.  And the Spanish men – and even more the Spanish women – are addicted to the black chocolate.”   Acosta also tells of a time in the port of Guatulco (Mexico) when the English burned more than 100,000 loads of cacao (a load contained 24,000 beans).  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1612 In his De Orbe Nove, Peter Matyr noted concerning chocolate (cacao): “But it is very needfull to heare what happie money they use, for they have monye, which I call happy, because for the greedie desire and gaping to attaine the same, the bowelles of the earth are not rent a sunder, nor through the ravening greediness of covetous men, nor terrour of warres assayling, it returneth to the dennes and caves of the mother earth, as golden, or silver money doth.  For this groweth upon trees.”  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1644 A recipe for preparation of  chocolate in Spain was published by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma.  The mixture included: 100 cacao beans, 2 chillis, a handful of anise, ear flower, 2 mecasuchiles, 1 vanilla, 2 oz cinnamon, 12 almonds and as many hazelnuts, 1/2 lb sugar, achiote to taste.  This was beaten into hot water, to a froth.  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1659 France’s first chocolate maker, David Chaliou, obtained a patent letter from the French king (signed in 1666)  for “the exclusive privilege of making, selling and serving a certain composition known as chocolate.”  Another Frenchman had opened the first chocolate house in London two years earlier.  (Bailleux, et al, 1996) (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1660 Cacao saplings were transported to the Philippines to begin plantations for production of raw chocolate.  (Bailleux, et al, 1996)

1720 In reference to production of cacao, Jean-Baptiste Labat (a Jesuit priest) noted: “Several experiments have convinced me that twenty Negroes can tend and cultivate fifty thousand cacao trees…These fifty thousand well-tended trees will yield a hundred thousand pounds of almonds (seed)  which, selling at seven sols and six deniers per pound…will earn thirty-seven thousand francs, a sum which is all the more appreciable because of the fact that almost all of it goes directly into the owner’s pocket, due to the low cost of keeping the slaves who tend the trees.  They constitute the one and only obligatory expense. …A cacao plantation is a veritable gold mine.”   (Bailleux, et al, 1996)

1745 Pierre Poivre, recovering in Batavia from the loss of his right arm as result of injuries received when English seamen captured the French vessel on which he sailed from China, first conceived his plan to create a French spice trade.  The plan involved cultivating stock plants of valuable tropical crops on two islands controlled by France, Mauritius and Reunion (which was called Bourbon Island), from whence they could be used to supply material around the world.  His idea was supported in France, leading to establishment of the Jardin des Pamplemousses (the Grapefruit Garden) on Mauritius, at the former site of the Jardin de Montplaisir.  By 1749 Poivre had begun sending material to the garden, everything from sweet peas to cacao.  Under perilous circumstances, he eventually obtained his most important material, nutmeg from Manilla and clove trees from Timor.  Poivre returned to France in 1757.  (Duval, 1982) [See 1767]

1779 From his jail cell, in a letter dated 9 May, the marquis de Sade wrote to his wife: “I asked…for a cake with icing, but I want it to be chocolate and black inside from chocolate as the devil’s ass is black from smoke.  And the icing to be the same.”  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1780 John Hannon, financed by Dr. James Baker, started the first chocolate factory in the US in Dorchester, Mass.  (Fussell, 1986) James Baker later founded Baker’s Chocolate.

1828 C. J. van Houten developed the first modern process for making cocoa powder.  Soon producers in Holland had learned that alkali could be added to neutralize various acids, making a mild, more soluble cocoa.   This process is still called “dutching” today.  (Simpson, 1989) By 1815, Van Houten was searching a method to remove cocoa butter better than boiling and skimming.  His work resulted in a press that reduces the cocoa butter from over 50% to under 30%.  This development improved the process of making chocolate beverages by creating making a more soluble product. (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1847 Chocolate candy was first created.  (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)  This is credited to Fry’s, Bristol, England.  

1859 In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens ridiculed French aristocracy through description of the ritual of chocolate consumption: “Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France, but, his morning’s chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.  Yes.  It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips.  One lacquey carried the chocolate into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with a little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out.  It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring heavens.  Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.” 

1875 Daniel Peter and Henri Nestlé added condensed milk to chocolate to create milk chocolate.  (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1879 Rudolphe Lindt devised conching,  a method of improving smoothness and flavor in chocolate.  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1879 Capitalizing on Henri Nestlé’s invention of powdered milk, Daniel Peter fabricated the first milk chocolate candy bars.  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1893 Milton Hershey (who manufactured caramel candies) attended the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he encountered Lehmann and Co. chocolate machinery in operation.  He purchased the equipment and began manufacturing his own chocolate to coat the caramels.  Later Hershey sold the caramel business, purchased a farm in Derry Township, PA, and began his famous chocolate empire.  (Coe and Coe, 1996)

1912 The GooGoo Cluster, a chocolate, caramel, & peanut candy, was created in Nashville, TN. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

Link to this Page: https://botanyincontext.com/botany-of-chocolate/