Episode Details

MesoAmerica and Chocolate

In our series looking at foods that built civilizations, today we are going to stay in the Americas with chocolate.

Chocolate has been used as currency, consumed by kings, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and prescribed as medicine. Today, it is a multibillion-dollar industry that wants you to believe that eating chocolate is an act of preventive cardiology.

I mean, why not? They convinced us to give chocolate to people we love, eat it when we are happy, when we are sad, when only the dog understands us. Don’t feed chocolate to your dog.

And we have done all this with a bitter seed that most of us would probably spit out if we tasted it straight from the tree.

Ancient Harvest and Production of Cacao

Archaeological evidence from Ecuador indicates people used cacao about 5,300 years ago.

Football-shaped pods were cut from large branches of the Theobroma cacao tree. The pods are sliced open and have 30 to 40 seeds encased in a sweet, sticky white pulp. The seeds and pulp were scooped out and placed into piles or baskets covered in banana leaves to ferment for 3 to 7 days. During fermentation, yeasts broke down the pulp, killed the seed germ, and began developing the chocolate flavor.

After fermentation, the beans were spread on mats and left in the sun for about a week. Workers periodically turned them until they were dry and brown. At this point, the beans were shelf-stable, light, and portable. They were bagged and used as currency across Mesoamerica. Imagine growing your currency.

To make the cacao drink, the beans were toasted on a griddle over an open fire, which loosened the papery outer husks. They then crushed the shells and blew away the husk, revealing the inner cacao nibs.

These were then ground, like maize, by rubbing a stone rolling pin back and forth over the nibs. The friction and a small controlled fire under the stone would melt the natural cacao butter. As a result, the solid nibs transformed into a rich, glossy, flowing chocolate paste.

They mixed this pure cacao paste with water, cornmeal (to thicken it), spicy chili peppers, wild vanilla, allspice, and fragrant flowers.

To serve it, they would pour the liquid from jars into bowls until a thick froth formed on top. That was considered the most prized part of the sacred drink.

The Maya used cacao in ceremonies, the Aztecs collected cacao as tribute, and the beans were used as currency. Just like we used to use the Hershey’s bar as currency on the playground. Imagine using chocolate to pay taxes. That chocolate would be as bitter as taxes are today.

Europe Meets Chocolate

The first time Cortez drank cacao, they hated it, describing it as a drink fit for swine. But then they began to experiment with the recipe by removing the chili peppers and cornmeal and adding lots of cane sugar. Do we know what Cortez said exactly? Not really, although I think of him as one of the nastier characters on The Princess Bride.

Then they added cinnamon, vanilla, and anise, instead of using the local herbs. And they served it hot, instead of cold.

The Spanish court kept this sweetened "hot chocolate" recipe a state secret for nearly 100 years. By the 1600s, the recipe leaked to the royal courts of France, Italy, and England, becoming the ultimate luxury status symbol for the European elite, and Starbucks fans everywhere. It is a good story, and some even think it is true.

The difference between cacao and cocoa is sometimes described as the difference between the original cold Aztec drink and the modern Spanish one. But it was probably a misspelling by the English traders on ship manifests. But if you want to sound cool, you use cacao.

Mother’s Day, 1990

It was Sunday, Mother’s Day, and I was a surgical resident on the vascu