Victoria University College

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 25, 30 January 1937, Page 14 (Supplement)

Victoria University College

SARAH ANNE RHODES FELLOWSHIP IN HOME SCIENCE DO YOU KNOW—CHOCOLATE IS CALLED “FOOD OF THE GODS?” Just when chocolate candy first appeared, nobody seems to know. Chocolate as a food and a beverage is of very ancient origin, however. The taste of chocolate, like the taste of apples, seems to be a universal passion, and one which, from early times, has appealed to the palates of almost every race. Probably no candy is more popular the world over than chocolate, which is made from cacao beans, the berries of the cacao tree. “Food of the gods” is a fitting name for this product, which was enjoyed by the Aztecs long before Columbus discovered America. But long beforo chocolate was known as a hot drink, it was served cold and thick, like a sort of porridge. When Cortes and his men marched into Mexico in 1519, they discovered that chocolate was the national drink of the Aztecs. According to Prescott, the Emperor Montezuma “. . . took no other beverage than ‘chocolatl' a potation of chocolate, flavoured with vanilla and other spices, and so prepared as to bo reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which gradually dissolved in the mouth, and was taken cold. This beverage, if so it could bo called, was served in golden goblets, with spoons of the same metal or tortoise shell finely wrought. The Emperor was exceedingly femd of it, to judge from the quantity—no less than fifty jars or pitchers being prepared for his own daily consumption; two thousand more were allowed for that of his household." Chocolate took Europe by storm when it was introduced by the Spaniards, who carried back from the New World large quantities of the precious cacao bean. From Spain, the fashion of drinking chocolate rapidly spread to France, Italy and finally to England. There chocolate houses and chocolate drinking became a national pastime. On November 24, 1664, Pepys makes the artless entry that he goes “. . . to a coffee house, to drink jocolatte, very good.” Popular taste has not greatly changed in the last six hundred years. The flavour of chocolate, “food of ✓he gods,” is enjoyed to-day, quite as much as in past ages when chocolate constituted the national drink of the Aztecs.