[Sca-cooks] Re: Chocolate

[Christiane]

<snip>
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.

My advice is to see if there was an influx in the Jewish communities, and look
at those records. If I find anything concrete on Italian chocolate, I will
forward it on.

:)
Elisabetta

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Elisabetta,

I am getting closer on this. The Spanish ruled Sicily in the 16th century; I found references to chocolate being brought to Sicily not too long after 1528, at least according to the food writer Faith Willinger, who says that chocolate began appearing in Sicilian dishes at that time. Faith Willlinger also says in the 18th century in Modica, there was a type of entrepreneur called a "ciucculattaru, a professional cocoa-bean processor who schlepped his stone tools, preroasted beans, sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon door-to-door. He blended chocolate to order, mixing it over a stone that was just warm enough to melt the cocoa butter, but not so hot that the sugar fully dissolved (that would be just above 40°C/104°F). The resulting bars were studded with sugar crystals." She believes that chocolate came to Modica "through the church network, an important route of cultural exchange, before the Spanish monopoly on cocoa beans was broken in 1606."

Now, this I know for a fact: in Sicily, nunneries supported themselves by making pastries and cookies and cakes, for the nobility who didn't have their own pastry chefs and for those who could afford such luxuries. In fact, I found a few references that one bishop in the 1590s instructed nuns to stop making cassatta during Lent, because it was distracting them from their prayers. Cassatta remains a very popular dessert today, and contains chunks of bittersweet chocolate. Here's the biggest problem: until very recently, none of these recipes were ever written down, and each nunnery guarded the knowledge about their specialty recipes jealously.

What I have asked folks in Italy to find out for me is if anyone in Modica has household account records (for the nobility) of purchases of cocoa beans and the services of a chocolate maker. If there were door-to-door chocolate makers in the 18th century, there had to be a practice of chocolate-making earlier than that. I have written to the Eurochocolate folks and I hope someone gets back to me with their insights. I can speak and read enough Italian to get by, although the Sicilian dialect is a real struggle for me.

Gianotta