Chocolate During The 1900's

During the 1900’s, B.C. that is, men in the Mokaya tribe of Central-Southern modern day Mexico found a jungle tree, the cacao tree, or as we know it, the cocoa tree. Their findings would be the start of a long usage of this extraordinary cacao bean for medicine, liquor and party drinks, and of course, chocolate. As the fifth most eaten food in the modern world, chocolate is very high in demand, especially in Switzerland, home of both the Nestle and Lindt chocolate companies, and in this case, chocolate actually does grow on trees.

The Mokaya people of Mexico, being the first to find chocolate beans, didn’t have the technology to experiment with it, so they began using it as a medicine, though it didn’t quite work. Later groups in the 13th century, such as the Mayan and Aztec priests, would mix

the fermented and ground cacao beans with wine or water, and then ground chili peppers would be added for a kick to the flavor, and then it would be mixed or poured into other cups to get foam on the top. In historical record, it is said that Montezuma II, the ninth Aztec ruler, drank almost 50 glasses of this chocolate mixture, or Xocoatll, a day. After Spain conquered the Aztecs, they built massive cacao plantations, and shipped it to Spain for large amounts of money or supplies. Upper-class Spaniards were the first Europeans to drink chocolate mixed with sugar, to give it a taste close to a modern-day chocolate drink. The Spanish aristocracy kept their new drink a secret for 80 years, until Italians captured a Spanish galleon loaded with cacao beans and chocolate making equipment and recipes, and then Italy had the secret of these chocolate drinks. Ten years later France learned about chocolate from Anne, Philip II’s daughter, princess of Spain and later wife of Louis XIII, the king of France at the time.
It took over 160 years for chocolate pieces to even be made, which was done in 1815 by Dutch chemist Coenraad von Houten, who added alkaline salts to the mix, and then skimmed off half the natural fat in the mixture so it could solidify.

30 years later Joseph Fry, another Dutchman, added the fat back after solidification to make the chocolate pieces moldable, and Rodolphe Lindt invented the conching machine in 1879, which can smooth chocolate into a bar or cylindrical piece. Englishman John Cadbury’s company was already making these bars, though not formed, in 1868, and his was the first to do boxed chocolates in little squares. 1893 was the year that Milton Hershey founded his chocolate company, but his would be the first to coat caramel in chocolate, which became an almost instantaneous favorite in the United States of America.

During the first World War chocolate was sent to the soldiers from the English town of York as a morale-boosting gift and 2 years before the second World War Hershey’s chocolate was put into every D ration of the United States Armed Forces. Between 1940 and 1945 almost 3 billion units of this new chocolate were shipped to Allied soldiers

worldwide.
Current day chocolate manufacturing is led by Mars Inc., which was invented in 1920 by Franklin Mars, and produces Snickers bars, Twix, M&M’s, and of course, Mars bars. Two-thirds of the world’s cacao beans are produced in partly slave plantations in West Africa, and more than half of this chocolate is bought and sold almost right away, with some of the chocolate promised not even existing.
The largest chocolate consuming countries in the world are lead by Switzerland, where the average Swiss citizen consumes 210 regular sized (43 kg) chocolate bars a year. Worldwide consumption comes up at almost 7.5 million tons of chocolate consumed in the year 2014 alone. This amount of chocolate consumed is 70,000 metric tons more than what was produced, and that can be good or bad; it just depends on the reader’s standpoint.