The History Of Chocolate

Let’s be honest. There are few foods in this world that everyone can agree on in terms of favorites. But regardless of what people think, they will always agree that chocolate is fantastic!

Whether you prefer white, dark, or milk chocolate, there is something for everyone. But while we enjoy all sorts of chocolate today, there is actually an incredibly long history belong everyone’s favorite sweet treat.

Lance Geiger, also known as The History Guy, runs through the entire history of chocolate. He reveals that chocolate, as we know it today, is actually a very recent invention. It hasn’t always been made this way since the discovery of the cacao bean, from which chocolate comes from. For many years prior, the cacao bean has actually been used to make drinks, and their levels of sweetness varied.

Geiger explains, “While the dried and permitted seeds of the Theobroma cacao plant had been part of human cuisine and culture for as long as 5000 years the stuff that you find in a box of chocolates is a surprisingly recent invention.”

The origin of chocolate dates back to the days of the Aztecs who would make a bitter drinking version of chocolate. In fact, the drink was so bitter that the word “chocolaté” actually translates to “bitter drink” in Nahuatl. Regardless of the bitterness, the Aztecs, and then later the Europeans, continued to make drinks using the cacao beans.

He further adds, “So in the as much as 5,000 years of human history with the cacao plant, still all we were using chocolate for was to make chocolate drinks. I mean, seriously no chocolate bits with chewy centers, no candy bars made of impossibly small squares, not even a chocolate chip.”

The changes to chocolate started happening in the early 19th century when a Dutch chocolatier began to experiment with the more solid form of chocolate. And that is how the modern form of chocolate that we know and love, started to take form.

Geiger further shared, “The breakthrough came in 1828 when a Dutch chocolatier named Casparis van Houten patented a hydraulic press that removed a large amount of the natural fat called cocoa butter that was in the nub of the cocoa bean….van Hauten’s son Conrad then developed a process that added alkaline salts, potassium, or sodium bicarbonates to …reduce the alkaline taste, producing a milder taste. The process creates something called dutch chocolate and it is the basis of virtually every chocolate product today.”

Following the van Houtens’ inventions, over the years other chocolatiers such as Fry and Sons, Cadbury, Hershey, Lindt, and Mars, all went on to create their own versions of chocolate bars and other chocolate items, thus flooding the market with the treats that we all recognize today. Pretty cool history, right?

Watch the video take on the history of chocolate down below:

Which is your favorite kind of chocolate? Are you more into dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate? Let us know!