Historical Background of Chocolate

Historical background of Cocoa

Cocoa was first introduced into England during the seventeenth century. But the Aztecs in Central America had been drinking chocolate hundreds of years before the Spanish explorer Cortez conquered Mexico in 1519. They called it ‘chocolatl’. Cortez is said to have tasted his first drinking chocolate in a golden goblet in the palace of the Aztec Emperor, Montezuma. It must have been a rather bitter, pungent drink for the Spaniards improved the flavour by adding sugar and guarded the secret of its preparation for almost a century.
When it was finally introduced into the courts of Spain, Italy, Germany, France and England, chocolate remained an expensive luxury. When the first chocolate house opened in London in 1657, chocolate cost from 50 pence to 75 pence a pound in weight (when the pound sterling was worth far more than in the 1970s) and the high price was sustained for many years by heavy import duties.
It remained a luxury product until Gladstone’s time when, in 1853, he lowered the duty to a uniform rate of one old penny per pound. In the early days, it was sold by auction in London. Producers sent samples to manufacturers who roasted and tested the beans and then bid for the variety they preferred. Auctions were known as ‘sales by candle’. This was derived from the practice of having a lighted candle with pins stuck at intervals down its side on the auctioneer’s desk. The last bid before the pin fell out secured the cocoa beans.