[Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 23, Issue 15

[elisabetta at klotz.org]

Broken up by comments...

>   Elisabetta mentioned:
>> 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.
>
> Hmmm. "available to everyone"? Yet  "in very limited areas"? Perhaps
> this depends upon how far down you go in the social ranks from
> nobility. But since the chocolate has to be imported, I wonder how its
> use could go deep across the social ranks and yet still be narrow
> geographically. Upon what are you basing your statement?

This is something that always baffled me. So one day some noble 
Spainish person
woke up and there was hot chocolat in his cup? Someone has to import it, roast
it, grind it, prepare it...it's not that easy. I've done it. It's part of my
period chocolate class. It is time consuming and hard to grind cocao nibs,
especially by hand. And then to prepare it into chocolat takes a lot of effort
also. There had to be servants who knew how to do this. Or specialists 
who were
trained in preparing chocolat.

My theory is that these people introduced into into small communities. 
Like Nuns
and the clergy. And possiblly Jews. Two enclosed communities.

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

Sorry for the confusions, that was a list. :)

>> Where I have not found any proof of pre-1600 use of chocolate in
>> Italy, there
>> are history rumors that Spanish Jews who moved to both Holland and
>> Italy
>> brought the chocolate recipes with them, and that a chocolate
>> bread-type cake
>> might have existed pre-1600 in Italy.
>
> Interesting. I thought such use would have to wait until the
> development of milk chocolate well out of period. Any idea if this
> would have been done by adding ground up chocolate nibs to the
> bread/cake or whether it was supposed to have been done by adding the
> brewed chocolate drink to the bread/cake? It might well be that one of
> these (or both?) techniques wouldn't work.

Since it's historical rumor, I have no actual proof of this. My guess is that
they used chocolate like spice, grinding it like nutmeg or hazelnut or other
nuts, and adding into batters as a powder. I'm also assuming that it was not a
modern chocolate cake, but type of spice cake that has chocolate as one
ingrediant. It would have been so bitter I can't imagine anyone using 
it alone.
Maybe adding it with honey and cinnamon. Hmmm...honey cinnomon 
chocolate bread.

I have looked in the Florilegium before, but I think the article you mentioned
post-dates my research. Thanks for the tip- I'll look again.

:)
Elisabetta