FW: FW: [Sca-cooks] Re: chocolate

[kingstaste at mindspring.com]

I've been forwarding the comments about chocolate along to THLady Temair
(Tara), who long ago lost the time to keep up with this list.  She has,
however, been working on a chocolate project, including a wonderful table
with examples of her work at our Midwinter A&S event last month.  She wrote
back with some comments, which I thought would be of interest back here.
Christianna

-----Original Message-----
From: Terri Spencer [mailto:tarats at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 6:06 PM
To: kingstaste at mindspring.com
Subject: Re: FW: [Sca-cooks] Re: chocolate



--- kingstaste at mindspring.com wrote:
> More on this -
> Christy

Interesting.  A few comments:

> The history of Modica chocolate starts long ago and far away, with
the
> meeting “ manqué ” between Cortez and Montezuma in 1519. As the story

> goes, as a sign of friendship the Aztec leader offered a drink made
> of coarsely ground cocoa seeds, water, corn flour, chilli, cinnamon
> and aniseed.

The story is almost right.  Cortez writes of cacao, and in 1519 was
offered a ceremonial chocolatl beverage that probably contained cacao,
water, masa, chilis, achiote, vanilla and other flavorings.  It could
not have contained cinnamon or aniseed.  Those were later Spanish
additions.


> The Spaniards found the drink disagreeable because it was bitter,

Almost every European who wrote about Aztec chocolatl found it
disagreeable.  Which probably didn't help the attempted ritual welcome.



> their first innovation was to add cane sugar to it.

Doubtful.  They were soldiers.  They might have had sugar, but I doubt
they added it to this strange spicy native beverage.

The addition of sugar is attributed apocryphally to the nuns of
Salamanca (Spain), the Spanish via the Arabian sweet-tooth influence on
the Iberian peninsula, or the women of Mexico.  The last were 2nd+
generation creole wives and daughters who developed a fondness for the
sweetened drink.  I don't have my timeline here at work, but it
includes an account of a 16th c. celebration in Mexico City of a treaty
between France and Spain.  The ladies are described as nibbling
sweetmeats and sipping chocolate from golden cups.  Another source
credits the creation of chocolate bars (not modern milk chocolate, but
hardened sweetened cacao paste, to make quick hot chocolate) to the
Mexican women.  Sophie Coe disagrees, citing a reference to a filling
paste of ground cacao and masa used as travel rations for Aztec
warriors - without the sugar, of course.


> My chocolate research indicated that chocolate was available to
> everyone (not
> just nobility) as a spice and drink before 1600, but in very limited
> areas.

I agree - but only for the last decade before 1600, as it was imported
commercially to Spain in 1585.  I don't know that it was available to
everyone, but certainly to those who could afford it.  Before that,
importation would have been in small quantities, with those who funded
the voyages most likely to have access - i.e. church and court.


> St. Esprit, the Jewish ghetto of Bayonne, France
> Bralizan colonies, both French (like Recife, 1550s?) and Porteguese
> Mexico

Certainly anyone in the New World had access.  Cacao beans were used as
currency, and were common in most South and Meso-American markets.

I have doubts about St. Esprit/Bayonne.  Casual googling reveals
several sites with a tale of Jews settling there after fleeing the
Spanish Inquisition of 1492, bringing their chocolate secrets with
them.  How they knew about chocolate in 1492, before Columbus returned
from the New World, would indeed be a great secret.  There is also a
tradition that in 1609 Spanish-Jewish chocolate-makers settled in
Bayonne, and a miraculous ship of cacao appeared.  However, local
archives do not mention chocolate-making until 1687.  In 1691 there was
an injunction against Jews selling chocolate to private customers
within the town walls.  In 1761 a guild was created, and in 1780 the
first chocolate factory in the world opened there.


> “chocolate”, which quickly spread throughout Europe, where royal
> courts considered it an elite, unconventional, healthy and dietetic
> drink.

Healthy, yes, it was cited by Aztecs and Europeans as a reviving,
strengthening beverage, and Montezuma supposedly drank it before
visiting his wives.  It was also used to mask flavors of other
medicaments.  However, I'm not sure what is meant by dietetic.  Most
described it as 'nourishing', which I've come to interpret in medieval
diet texts as fattening.  And there are remarks that those who drank a
lot of it (once sugar was added) grew corpulent and corrupt.


> Cocoa seeds were crushed with an implement the Aztecs called a
> metatl , a curved stone resting on two cross-bases, using a special
> stone rolling pin.

Well, almost right.  They called it a metlatl.  Today's metate and
mano, of volcanic stone, used to grind cacao as well as maize, chilis,
tomatoes, etc.  I want a set for the 'late period caffeine addicts'
class I'm developing.  I found at Midwinter A&S and Coronation that the
coffee mill cannot really grind it fine enough because the cocoa butter
bogs it down, and I have to stop before the thing overheats.  But the
metate y mano I've found so far are more than I want to spend.


> Supposedly
> there are church records condemning the local Christains who went to
> "the wrong
> side of the tracks" for chocolat. The church looked at chocolat like
> our government looks at pot.

Hmmm - maybe at first, but it was established fairly early that
chocolate was a vegetable product, and thus an allowable lenten luxury.
 The great debate was whether it broke the fast.  The apocryphal
version is that pope Pius V ruled in 1569 that when made with water it
did not, and in 1664 Cardinal Brancaccio affirmed that, like wine, it
was a drink and not food.  There are tales of those so addicted to the
drink that they had it brought to them during divine services, which
predictably earned the wrath of the church.  But the drink was not
condemned, and became the breakfast-in-bed of the decadent nobility.

OTHO, the church probably did not appreciate them lounging in bed
drinking chocolate late into the morning before even thinking of
attending Mass. (Remember the medieval condemnation of bedside Mass to
allow breakfast in bed?)

I think this also might be coming from the 18th century coffee vs.
chocolate ethic.  Coffee became the drink of coffeehouses, merchants
and workers.  That caffeine boost replaced morning ale and fueled the
industrious and the industrial revolution.  Which did not appreciate
the previously mentioned lounging decadent chocolate-drinkers.  And see
who won?  America gulps down coffee each morning (I know I do) and hot
cocoa is for kids and the occasional winter indulgence.

I can almost feel this cacao project turning into a research paper. Not
that you'd do anything to encourage that.  :P

Jadwiga and Brighid both elevated at the same event!  That's so kewl!
Thanks for letting me know.  I hope to see them both at Pennsic.


Tara