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[Philip & Susan Troy]

	Adamantius wrote:
	It does seem unlikely, but the contest people may be referring to
the possibility of edible pastilles of cacao and sugar, little tablets that
could be dissolved in hot water for chocolate, or eaten as is. I vaguely
recall seeing a reference to this habit, but am pretty sure the point of the
researcher bringing up the diarist's passage was that these pastilles appear
not to have reached Europe in period.

>From "Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke." London, 1652, by Capt. John
Wadsworth. Apparently a translation of a book by Melchor de Lara, "Physitian
General for the Kingdome of Spaine", 1631.
 " ...with a spoone take up some of the Paste <which is made up of
chocolate, chilli, aniseed, sugar and various other spices>, which will be
almost liquid; and so either make it into Tablets; or put it into Boxes; and
when it is cold it will be hard. To make the Tablets, you must put a
spoonfull of the Paste upon a piece of paper, the Indians put it upon the
leaf of a Plantentree, where being put into the shade, it growes hard; and
then bowing the paper, the Tablet falls off, by reason of the fatnesse of
the paste. But if you put it into any thing of earth, or wood, it sticks
fast, and will not come off, but with scraping, or breaking. "  and goes on
to speak of the habit of also drinking chocolate hot or cold as well as in
tablets.

Whether this can be backdated to pre-1600 is one of those never-resolved
debates I think.

Cordialmente,
Lucretzia

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Lady Lucrezia-Isabella di Freccia   |  mka Tina Nevin
Thamesreach Shire, The Isles, Drachenwald | London, UK
thorngrove at geocities.com | http://www.geocities.com/~thorngrove  
"There is no doubt that great leaders prefer hard drinkers to good
versifiers" - Aretino, 1536 
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