The 7th July 1550 is marked as the date that chocolate was ‘introduced’ to Europe. But the history of chocolate is far longer and more complicated than the fixing of one specific date allows. Over the last 500 years or so, the chocolate we know and love today has taken shape and become perhaps the world’s best-loved confectionary.
Here’s what we do know….
The 1500s
We recently chatted with Serena Redshaw, Guest Experience Manager at York’s Chocolate Story, a chocolate museum dedicated to the telling of chocolate’s rich history. She explained that it was through Columbus and later Don Hernán Cortés and their encounters with the Aztec’s that the ‘secret’ ingredients of the sacred drink made using cacao beans became known within royal Spanish circles.
It’s thought that Columbus brought cocoa beans to Spain as early as 1504, but Hernán was the one to recognise their commercial potential and brought both beans and chocolate-brewing apparatus with him in 1528. The potency of the drink produced from the beans was a closely-guarded secret in the royal courts, but over the next 100 years ‘hot chocolate’ gradually dispersed across Europe becoming a particular favourite of Marie Therese and finding its way to the Palace of Versailles through her marriage to Louis XIV in 1660.
The 1600s to 1700s
From France, hot chocolate found its way into the British well-to-do classes. London’s first chocolate house was opened in 1657 and English café visitors continued in the tradition of the drink as a cure-all medicine believing it to be a cure for tuberculosis. Yet still hot chocolate was typically served unsweetened and likely to be flavoured with coffee, wine and pepper.
It wasn’t until the early 1700s when someone had the bright idea (probably an English or Dutch businessman) of adding cream and sugar to transform it into a sweet treat rather than a bitter medicine. A collection of ceramic hot chocolate pots in York’s Chocolate Story collection points to the growing popularity and accessibility of cocoa for making at home.
As the recipe was transformed so the number of chocolate houses across London expanded. It was once said that there were more chocolate houses than coffee houses in the capital in the 1700s. Yet still, hot chocolate remained, due in part to import duties and the cost of the ingredients, a luxury for the rich – and the infamous!
Chocolate houses and clubs were notorious gambling dens, so much so that Charles II tried to suppress them and Daniel Defoe warned fathers to protect their daughters from the ‘promiscuous conversations’ that might take place within the walls of certain chocolate houses.
Of course, the industrial revolution was to change the face of chocolate forever, bringing it to the masses through the invention of solid chocolate.
The birth of the chocolate bar
Joseph Storr Fry of the British company J.S. Fry & Sons is credited with the invention of the edible chocolate bar in 1847. Before then, his father had already expanded the company into selling chocolate tablets which would have been used for making hot chocolate in the home. Joseph junior's invention and the subsequent advances in manufacturing techniques paved the way for companies like Cadbury’s, Terry’s, Rowntree’s and Hershey to popularise solid chocolate.
Serena told us that, in York, people would pay for their Christmas chocolate selection boxes in instalments. Perhaps the need for a saving scheme is not that surprising given that some of the selection boxes contained valuable items such as clocks and other trinkets. It was thanks to Rowntree’s deciding to feature just the chocolate in their selection boxes, that the idea of chocolate was transformed into an accessible gift.
Ancient History
There’s strong evidence that cacao has been cultivated by humans for more than 5,000 years and its origins can be traced back to the Amazon rainforest. Residues found in ancient pottery suggests that the fruit of the cacao tree was used as sustenance and medicine by the indigenous peoples of today’s South America.
The word chocolate is thought to derive from the Nahuatl word – Xocolātl meaning ‘bitter water’. Should you visit York’s Chocolate Story, you will be treated to a modern-day interpretation of how this may have tasted to ancient Mayan’s.
We say ‘treated’ in the loosest sense of the word! Unsweetened, spiced and watery, Xocolātl really is an acquired taste. To the Mayans, and later the Aztecs, it was more than just a drink – it was revered as a symbol of power, a medicinal elixir and a gift from the gods. Indeed, it is this that we must thank for the cacao tree’s Latin name, Theobroma Cacao – Theobroma meaning ‘food of the gods’ and cacao derived from Hispanised forms of Mesoamerican words like ‘kakaw’ and ‘cacahuatl’, meaning ‘bean of the cocoa tree’.
Back to the question
Quite why the 7th July was chosen to celebrate World Chocolate Day remains a mystery – at least to us. Since its origins go back only as far as 2009, it’s likely that it was dreamt up by a chocolate brand or industry association to generate more PR, as if more were needed, for chocolate.
Chocolate has plenty of other celebratory dates, too:
- International Chocolate Day is celebrated on 13th September, chosen as it's the birthday of Milton S. Hershey
- Chocolate Day in Ghana, the world's second largest producer of cocoa, is celebrated on 14th February, of course!
- The USA lists 28th October and 28th December as National Chocolate Days
- National Hot Chocolate Day is aptly celebrated on 31st January, when a warming mug of hot cocoa is most welcome
- In the UK, we have Chocolate Week, typically celebrated over the second week of October
Whatever the slightly dubious reasons for choosing the 7th July to celebrate World Chocolate Day, celebrate we must – today and every day! Remembering that chocolate has a long and expansive, and not always pleasant history.
Today, we honour our amazing cocoa farmers, without whom the refined chocolate that we make simply wouldn’t be possible, and we honour our craft chocolate makers whose magic touch transforms our quality cocoa beans into something truly worth celebrating.
