chocolate

Chocolate made the journey from Mesoamerica to Spain, and then to other European countries, including England. Not long after the sweetness was tasted in London, it traveled across the Atlantic to the North American colonies. It is possible to have traveled there directly from Jamaica after the island had been seized from Spain. However, the most genuine explanation is that high Colonial officials carried it with them when they were assigned to their administrative posts in Virginia and Massachusetts.
Throughout the Colonial era many market and wage transactions were conducted with cacao beans. For example: one good hen is worth 100 full cacao beans, a turkey cock is worth 200 cacao beans, each hare is 100 cacao beans, and a turkey egg is 3 cacao beans. Rates of exchange between cacao and the gold and silver coinage of the Spanish Crown—but the amounts fluctuated with the cacao availability and changes in the value of metallic currency.
When cacao became available in Spain, it was modified with cinnamon and other spices; sugar was used to sweeten the mix. Somehow they were able to keep their drink invention among them for nearly 100 years before it escaped to Europe. Sweetened chocolate became an extreme craze for the continent. In a letter of 1779, a viceroy noted: “In this country [New Spain] cacao is primary food not only for persons of means as in other countries, but also among the poor people.” It seems that the people of Spain were content with sharing this savory chocolate among all the people, rather than those in other parts of Europe.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries chocolate was sold in solid form and packaged in bars. It was also consumed in liquid form, dissolved in hot milk or water, wine was also ...

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...terized as the “Henry Ford of Chocolate Makers.” With the help from his aunt, he established his own candy business in Philadelphia in 1876, he was merely 19. He mainly produced caramel confections, which he ended up selling for one million dollars after a trip to the chocolate centers of Europe. With the money, Hershey bought a farm in Derry Township, Pennsylvania, and built his chocolate factory. This became the nucleus of “Hershey, the Chocolate Town.”
Chocolate companies changed from minimal production to massive manufacturing. Thus, targeting different market segments that weren’t possible to reach due to the high cost of the good. The market was able to shift because of the industrialization process that includes several innovations, such as van Houten’s process, this allowed a broad production and distribution of chocolate that spread around the globe.