Chocolate is a treat almost everyone adores. Its sweetness, intense flavour and smooth, fragrant character make it hard to resist, and it is also one of the most popular ingredients in baking.
The Cacao Tree: Where Chocolate Began
Around the 14th century, after products made from cacao beans emerged and many people learned that the cacao tree could be used as food, cacao products became known among the Aztecs, who began trading cacao beans with the Maya.
Chocolate from the Maya then became hugely popular with the Aztecs, so much so that they collected cacao beans as tribute from their citizens and prisoners of war instead of money. Like the early Maya, the Aztecs liked to make chocolate into a drink, mixing it with spices for more flavour.
Later, the chocolate drink became reserved for the elite: only royalty, titled nobles and prominent members of society could drink it, and only on important occasions. Chocolate thus became a symbol with an important role in special royal ceremonies and religious rites, and cacao beans of that era naturally came to be used as offerings to the gods.
Where Does the Word "Chocolate" Come From?
The word comes from Mayan and refers to drinking chocolate. It combines the Mayan word "chocol", meaning hot, with the Aztec word "atl", meaning water, to form "chocolatl", which later shifted to the familiar word chocolate in English pronunciation.
The World's First Chocolate House
After chocolate had long been used as tribute during the colonial era, wealthy Englishmen bought cacao beans and opened the first chocolate house in London in 1657. It operated like a coffee house, where people met to talk over hot chocolate. Only the well-off could use it, and some establishments admitted men only.
Chocolate has been adapted, processed and developed ever since. Today it is part of desserts, baked goods and drinks, and is sometimes even combined with savoury dishes.
