[Sca-cooks] Re: chocolate

[Stefan li Rous]

  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?

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

Portuguese "Mexico"? I thought the Portuguese were only in Brazil?

> These treatise, and trade manifests, are what I am
> interested in, because they will at least prove that people were 
> eating a form
> of chocolat prior to 1600 in Europe.

If I remember correctly, some other evidence for chocolate use *in* 
Europe has been given on this list in the past. You might want to take 
a glance at this Florilegium file:
chocolate-msg     (69K)  6/19/04    History and description of early 
chocolate.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/chocolate-msg.html

> 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.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****