The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in anthropology, business, economics, food, history, sociology, botany, archaeology, culinary history, and related subjects.

The True History of Chocolate is by the anthropologists Dr. Sophie Coe and Professor Michael Coe of Yale University.

The TU Library collection includes many other books about different aspects of the manufacture and sale of chocolate.

Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form for almost 4000 years.

Cocoa originated in the Americas, but today West African countries, particularly Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, are the leading producers, accounting for some 60% of the world cocoa supply.

The publisher’s description reads:

This delightful tale of one of the world’s favorite foods draws on botany, archaeology, and culinary history to present a complete and accurate history of chocolate.

It begins some 4,000 years ago in the jungles of Mexico and Central America with the chocolate tree, Theobroma Cacao, and the complex processes necessary to transform its bitter seeds into what is now known as chocolate. This was centuries before chocolate was consumed in generally unsweetened liquid form and used as currency by the Maya and the Aztecs after them. The Spanish conquest of Central America introduced chocolate to Europe, where it first became the drink of kings and aristocrats and then was popularized in coffeehouses. Industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made chocolate available to all, and now, in our own time, it has become once again a luxury item.

As an earlier author explained,

THE name ” chocolate ” is nearly the same in most European languages, and is taken from the Mexican name of the drink, “chocolatl,” or “cacahuatl.” Atl is common enough in Mexican words, and is known to signify water. What the first part of the word  means is not so clear. A French writer says it signifies noise, and  that the drink was so named because it was beaten to a froth before being drunk.

The Spaniards found chocolate in common use among the Mexicans at the time of the invasion under Cortez, in 15 19, and it was introduced into Spain immediately after. The Mexicans not only used chocolate as a staple article of food, but they used the seeds of the cacao tree as a medium of exchange. An early writer says : “In certain provinces called Guatimala and Soconusco there is growing a great store of cacao, which is a berry like unto an almond. It is the best merchandise that is in all the Indies. The Indians make drink of it, and in like manner meat to eat. It goeth currently for money in any market, or fair, and may buy flesh, fish, bread or cheese, or other things.”

In the ” True History of the Conquest of Mexico,” by Bernal Diaz, an officer under Cortez, it is related that ” from time to time a liquor prepared from cocoa and of a stimulating or corroborative quality, as we are told, was presented to Montezuma in a golden cup. We could not at the time see if he drank it or not, but I observed a number of jars — above fifty — brought in and filled with foaming chocolate.”

Thomas Gage, in his ” New Survey of the West Indies,” first published in 1648, gives the following interesting account of the Spanish and Indian ways of making and drinking chocolate some two hundred and fifty years ago. […]

Chocolate appears to have been highly valued as a remedial agent by the leading physicians of that day. Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann wrote a treatise entitled “Potus Chocolate,” in which he recommended it in many diseases, and instanced the case of Cardinal Richelieu, who, he stated, was cured of general atrophy by its use.

The earliest intimation of the introduction of cocoa into England is found in an announcement in the Public Advertiser of Tuesday, June 16, 1657 (more than a hundred and thirty years after its introduction into Spain), stating that “In Bishopsgate Street, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West India drink, called chocolate, to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time; and also unmade, at reasonable rates.”

Two years later, in the Mercurius Politicus for June, 1659, it is stated that ” Chocolate, an excellent West India drink, is sold in Queen’s Head Alley, in Bishopsgate Street, by a Frenchman who did formerly sell it in Grace Church Street and Clement’s Churchyard, being the first man who did sell it in England ; and its virtues are highly extolled.”

A book written in the time of Charles II., entitled “The Indian Nectar, or a Discourse Concerning Chocolate, etc.,” says the best kind can be purchased of one Mortimer, ” an honest though poor man, living in East Smithfield,” for 6s. 8d. per pound, and commoner sorts for about half that price.

About the beginning of the eighteenth century, chocolate had become an exceedingly fashionable beverage, and the cocoa tree was a favorite sign and name for places of public refreshment. Cocoa and chocolate are frequently mentioned in contemporary literature ; and among others the poet Alexander Pope.

Chocolate was first manufactured in this country in 1765, in a mill on the Dorchester side of the Neponset River, at a point long known as Milton Lower Mills. Fifteen years later the plant came into the possession of Dr. James Baker, and the small beginning then made of a newindustry has developed into the world-famous manufacturing establishment known as Walter Baker & Co. Ltd., of which some account is given farther on. […]

The chef and food historian Brillat-Savarin, from whose work we have already quoted, says time and experience have shown “that chocolate, carefully prepared, is an article of food as wholesome as it is agreeable ; that it is nourishing, easy of digestion, and does not possess those qualities injurious to beauty with which coffee has been reproached ; that it is excellently adapted to persons who are obliged to a great concentration of intellect in the toils of the pulpit or the bar, and especially to travelers ; that it suits the most feeble stomach ; that excellent effects have been produced by it in chronic complaints, and that it is a last resource in affections of the pylorus.”

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)