The Maya people who lived in Central America from around 300-900 AD were fond of liquid chocolate drinks with a foamy, frothy top but the consumption of chocolate was mainly restricted to the society's elite. The drink was made by mixing the roasted, crushed cocoa beans and ground maize with a little water.
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| A Maya lord forbids an individual from touching a container of chocolate. |
The Spaniards in the New World changed the way chocolate was prepared. They were put off by the drink's black, gloomy appearance, and found its taste far too bitter and spicy. So, the Spanish added cane sugar as a sweetener, and flavorings such as vanilla, or more mild spices such as cinnamon and black pepper as opposed to chillies. A foam was created with the “molinillo”, a wooden whisk-like tool that was twirled between the palms of the hands to mix the chocolate.
Cortez took the drink to Spain where it served as a luxurious beverage to only the highest social classes: royalty, military, long-distance traders, and Catholic clergy.
London's first chocolate house, The Coffee Mill and Tobacco Roll, in Gracechurch Street opened in 1657. The owner, an imaginative Frenchman, advertised it as a drink which “cures and preserves the body of many diseases.” Costing 10 to 15 shillings per pound, chocolate was considered a beverage for the elite class.
The addition of milk, much improving chocolate as a drink, was an innovation in the early eighteenth century. Credit goes to Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish botanist, who spent some time in Jamaica in the early 1700s, Sloane was offered a cocoa powder drink by the villagers and thought it tasted foul, so he mixed it with milk instead and brought it back to England where it was sold as medicine.
When you tap your spoon on the bottom of a cup of hot chocolate, the pitch of the sound will increase. The phenomenon is known as the “Hot Chocolate Effect”.
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