The True History of Chocolate

Rating:
Summary: For the Love of Chocolate
Review: "The ultimate origin of processed chocolate, though, seems to lie with the Olmec of the lowland forests of southern Mexico, some three millennia in the past, as shall be seen in Chapter Two." pg. 13

When reading another book called: "Food: A Culinary History," we find information on Chocolate telling of how chocolate was "discovered." They basically explain how the Spanish discover chocolate when they colonized the New World and explain how the Aztecs had used chocolate in their rituals.

Which rituals? (You will be shocked)
Who actually first discovered the Theobroma cacao plant/tree or learned how to use the beans (they look a lot like giant almonds in the picture) in the pods (look like an elongated squash) growing directly from the tree trunk? (It wasn't the Aztecs)
Do ungerminated beans have the same flavor as germinated beans?

The story of chocolate is extremely detailed. This book traces the discovery of chocolate from it's earliest pre-Columbian roots to modern times. The way we serve chocolate today almost seems primitive when you read how many ways the Aztecs made their chocolate drinks.

Honeyed Chocolate
Flowered Chocolate
Green Vanilla Flavored Chocolate
Bright Red Chocolate

It is amazing how this book came together as it has, because Sophie D. Coe was diagnosed with cancer before the book was completed. Her husband, Michael D. Coe, took on the responsibility of literally thousands of pages of notes and finished a book she started.

The authors spent hundreds of hours tracing down all possible references to chocolate in Libraries in America and Europe. They also searched in 400-year-old books in the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome.

The story of Chocolate is amazing. Just the way it is made is a process that was kept secret for many years.

From Research I've done in the past:
Seed pods, growing on the trunk and main branches are harvested and opened with sharp blades to reveal creamy white cacao beans which darken, then ferment under banana leaves for up to nine days as they lay in the sun. After a 250* to 350* hour-long roasting process, the beans are dehulled leaving small pieces called nibs.

Cocoa powder results from ground roasted beans which have the cocoa butter removed. After the cocoa butter is extracted, dry cakes of cocoa are ground and sifted to make fine cocoa powder. Most cocoa powder is naturally 97.75% caffeine-free. A 1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder contains about .0002 ounces of caffeine. There is 10 times as much caffeine in a 6-ounce cup of coffee.

The Dutch chemist Coenraad Van Houten added alkali to neutralize the acidity of chocolate and mellow the flavor. This is how the darker Dutch-process cocoa was created. Black cocoa is slightly more bitter and is the darkest cocoa powder available. It is best combined with a Dutch-process cocoa powder. When manufacturers make chocolate bars, the roasted beans are crushed with sugar and vanilla to make chocolate liquor.

The chocolate liquor is refined to evaporate excess moisture and acidity, then it is ground so fine that the mouth no longer perceives the beans as individual particles. After heating and cooling, chocolate is poured into molds, cooled and wrapped to be sold as bittersweet, semisweet or unsweetened chocolate bars, depending on sugar content or lack of it.

This book takes you on a "chocolate" journey. This is a book about the history of chocolate and does contain some rather interesting "chocolate drink formulas."

I guess one of my only objections might include places where the authors called a ritual "spectacular" instead of "detailed/extravagant." It made it seem that they were defending the Aztec's brutal way of life although I'm sure they were not. They just tried to look at the reality of the situation and probably found the rituals rather out of the ordinary. The reason for the rituals seems based on "fear that the world would end."

There also did seem to be some rather morbid uses for chocolate in the past. There is also a passage that says something about a "baseless" claim for chocolate having aphrodisiac properties. We do know that it contains substances, which do produce an "in love" feeling.

What really had my attention was the topic of Crillo beans vs. "Forastero" beans. The Crillo tree produces the best quality beans, while the Forastero produces a more bitter bean. Valrhona Manjari is made exclusively with rare Indian Ocean Crillo beans. This gives the chocolate a winey, bittersweet flavor and incredible aroma.

If you have yet to taste this or use it in cooking, look for it online or by looking for the N.Y. Cake and Baking Distributor catalog or Formaggio Kitchen catalog.

Many chefs swear by this chocolate and I can tell you it is the best I've found besides a chocolate I love called "Peter's Chocolate from Nestle." Nestle chocolate is my ultimate favorite. Especially the milk chocolate. The use of cocoa butter in place of all those other palm oils is rather refreshing. Being one can be highly allergic to palm oils and cottonseed oils and the like.

The difference between the bars is that you can eat Peter's Chocolate straight off the bars, but the Valrhona Manjari bars are a bit bitter on their own. When you mix in a little cream and sugar, it becomes magic.

Valrhona chocolate is of course considered to be one of the finest chocolates in the world. I myself won't use anything but Valrhona Manjari in my Chocolate Ice Cream and Mocha Freeze. I also discovered Valrhona Caraque for use in Truffles. The authors also include the meaning for "Manjari" which is "Sanskrit for "bouquet."

If you are hungry for information about chocolate, this is the best book I've read so far. It is intensely detailed and does seem to have been written because of a love for chocolate!

Have a few cups while you read. Just don't forget the whipped cream and nutmeg! I haven't yet tried a "spicy" version.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding and well writen book
Review: One of the best writen books I have read. Truthfull and soundly based, it is a monument for MS Coe.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful account of cacoa history
Review: Sophie and Michael Coe have written a emminently readable history of chocolate. They emphasize the origins of cacoa in the New World, and the Spanish conquerors' response to their "discovery" of cacoa. The story fascinates, and I liked how the authors presented all the options when historical records were scarce or contradictory. The text is interspersed with clarifying illustrations, some are in color. The 19th and 20th centuries are covered in brief. The book ends with the resurgence in deluxe chocolates that use the rarer yet better tasting cacoa beans, and explains why these chocolates are so much better tasting than the supermarket candy bar. All in all, an excellent read.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful account of cacoa history
Review: Sophie and Michael Coe have written a emminently readable history of chocolate. They emphasize the origins of cacoa in the New World, and the Spanish conquerors' response to their "discovery" of cacoa. The story fascinates, and I liked how the authors presented all the options when historical records were scarce or contradictory. The text is interspersed with clarifying illustrations, some are in color. The 19th and 20th centuries are covered in brief. The book ends with the resurgence in deluxe chocolates that use the rarer yet better tasting cacoa beans, and explains why these chocolates are so much better tasting than the supermarket candy bar. All in all, an excellent read.

Rating:
Summary: Totally Cholestorol Free
Review: This book may be the only way to indulge in chocolate without gaining weight. The "True History of Chocolate" is fascinating in relating the Mayan and Inca cacao rituals - chocolate was an all-purpose sauce, drink, drug, what-have-you, as the recent film "Chocolat" attests. There are wonderful stories of chocolate's introduction to aristocratic Europe, as immortalized by Dicken's account of the Marquis' chocolate drinking in "A Tale of Two Cities." As today, doctors of the day were divided on chocolate's merits, wildly debating whether chocolate generated a phlegmatic or choleric humor. Only very recently was chocolate sweetened, and only later yet was it reduced to solid form and packaged in factories. The Coes seem to suggest that something mysterious was forever lost when the vulgarians of Cadbury and Hershey started peddling cacao to the masses.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful Reading!
Review: This book was an extremely readable examination of the history of chocolate, starting with the ancient MesoAmericans and ending with contemporary European and American chocolate makers. Anyone interested in the history and development of their favorite confection or beverage should read this book - it's written engagingly in the first half, and then peters out just a tad towards the end. I wished for more about the modern chocolate industry, and a little more about the current manufacturing spike in fine chocolates. But as an anthropological study revolving around the development of chocolate, I could ask for nothing more. Coe and Coe have inspired a chocolate tasting party and an academic interest in a gastrologic subject.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging: Academic yet Readable
Review: This book went beyond my expectations by presenting the history of chocolate in an unbiased, academic yet readable format. A far cry from high school history textbooks, the authors enchant the reader with stories and historical tid-bits while maintaining a cohesive whole. I definitely recommend this book to chocolate connoisseurs, history-buffs, and chocoholics alike.

Rating:
Summary: What a Read !
Review: This is one of the better books I've ever read. The research of Sophie Coe is quite amazing and her passion for the history of chocolate is contagious. Her husband Michael is a beautiful writer...and he was called on to finish this the last work of his brilliant wife who died before it could be completed. I loved this book !!