When we listen to the word chocolate; we visualize a chocolate bar or cubes of chocolate. The most appropriate adjective that comes to our mind is sweet. But in the history of chocolates, it was a beverage, and sugar had nothing to do with it. It is not clear when the chocolate came into existence, but it surely was cherished from the beginning.
The History of Chocolate
By the 17th century, chocolate was a popular drink throughout Europe, believed to have nutritious, medicinal, and even aphrodisiac properties. But it remained a the luxury of the rich until the time came of the invention of the steam engine that made possible mass production in the late 1700s.
In 1828, a Dutch chemist found a method to make powdered chocolate. He did so by excluding half of the natural fat from chocolate liquor, crushing what remained and handling the mixture with alkaline salts to cut the bitter taste. The product later was known as “Dutch cocoa,” and it soon led to the invention of solid chocolate.
The credit for inventing the first modern chocolate bar is with Joseph Fry. In 1847 He discovered that he could make a moldable chocolate paste by adding melted cacao butter into Dutch cocoa. And hence, the world’s first solid chocolate was born.
By 1868, a startup company called Cadbury was selling boxes of chocolates in England. Milk chocolate came in the market a few years later, by another name that may ring a bell – Nestle.
The chocolate manufacturing industry is more than a 4-billion-dollar sector in the United States of America and the average American eats at minimum half an A pound of the stuff per month. Stressed or not stressed, eating some chocolate always does wonders.
