[Sca-cooks] Sweet chocolate, Modican chocolate (OOP -- maybe)

[Terry Decker]

As stated "the basic recipe" came from the Aztec and according to the entry 
for Cacao in The Cambridge World History of Food, the Aztec did mix cacao 
with honey (as well as with hot water, cold water, maize, ground chili 
peppers, vanilla, annato, etc., etc. etc.).  The sugar could be a 
replacement for honey.

And before someone complains that honeybees are of European origin, let me 
point out that subspecies Melipona and Trigona are of New World origin and 
produced honey for the Maya, Olmec, Aztec and others long before the 
Europeans arrived on the scene.

Bear


>I have a quibble here--- How could the Aztecs have been crushing
> cacao beans with sugar prior to the Europeans bringing sugarcane
> to the New World?
>
> Johnnae
>
> Christiane wrote:
>> While I was in Sicily last year, I had bought Modican chocolate, which 
>> the natives of Modica claim has been made in that city at least from the 
>> 1600s. Modica was founded in the late 1500s by the Aragonese royalty, and 
>> was a rich city. Modicans claim the basic recipe came from the Aztec. The 
>> chocolate is made by crushing the cacao beans on a heated volcanic stone, 
>> and the paste is mixed with sugar, poured into slabs, and then cooled. 
>> What results is a very gritty-textured chocolate, with the sugar lending 
>> a crystalline quality.snipped
>>
>> Gianotta