Old South Meeting House; WGBH Forum Network; Stimulating Beverages: Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate in Early America

WGBH--Today we are starting our January series, 'Colonial Music and Libations,' by looking at the ri- rise of some of the more popular beverages in our culture. Tea, coffee and chocolate. Joining us today is Amanda Lange who is the curator of Historic Interiors at Historic De--. Deerfield. As a Mars Fellow, Ms. Lange has been researching the history of chocolate early America for the last four years. She's also a member of the Colonial Chocolate So- Society, a scholarly group of museum professionals, academics and historians, underwritten by the Mars foundation. Miss Lang's most recent exhibition, ' The ?canting? Connection: Art and Commerce of the China Trade,' highlighted historic Deerfield's remarkable collection of Chinese export art. Please help me welcome Miss Amanda Lange. Lange--Well, thank you very much. I'm so pleased to be here and this is just a probably, hands-down, one of the most fabulous interiors that I've ever had the honor to give a lecture within. So I'm very pleased to be here today. So today I will go very quickly through

my slides. Wel- Well, tea, coffee and chocolate are very familiar foods to us, from de- drinking a cup of Lipton tea, sipping, a Starbucks latte or mixing up a mug of hot cocoa, but few people ever give give thought to where these beverages came from or how they shaped and influenced our daily life in the past. Before about 16- 50, an average breakfast would have included a mug of ale, beer, or hard cider and perhaps, wine. not the best way to start your day, at least if you want to kick it off with with an alert an alert mind. The introduction into the 17th century or into 17th century Europe of of three new beverages, coffee, tea and chocolate, had an immediate and lasting effect on the tastes and habits of the Wes- Western world. These three

beverages were direct results of international trade and com- commerce, while the Spanish, English, Dutch, and Portuguese were sailing the oceans for gold and silver and attempting to locate passages to the east, and competing for global influence and empires, they stumbled upon these three new exotic beverages. Tea came first, from China, coffee from Turkey and Arabia, and chocolate from Mexico and Central America. And I'm going to first talk about tea, than coffee, then chocolate. Merchants and travelers and encountered tea-drinking in foreign lands and quickly adopted the habit. Westerners from around the world came to Canton, Canton, China. And I'll point that out with my laser beam. Canton, China is right at the head head of the Pearl River and you can see it's right there in southern China. About as far away from the er the Emperor in Peking

or Beijing as you could possibly get and that does have a purpose it was because the Emperor wanted to separate himself from from things like trade and also from barbarian foreign traders. Well, Westerners came from around the world to Canton, China to purchase all types of tea for their their home market and tea above all other commodities, made Western trade with the Chinese imperative. A French trader named Robert Constant said in the mid-18th century, he remarked it's above all other commodities which draws European vessels to China. He said the other articles that comprise their cargoes are taken only for the sake of variety. Tea shrubs, Camilla[need correct spelling], were picked three times a year in early spring, late late spring, and late summer. The first crops of tea arrived in Canton in October. With purchases continuing throughout the winter months

months. Tea purchases for the West can roughly be divided into two ca-- categories: blacks which composed, if you want to talk about varieties, Things like Bo He, Congo, Pico, Pushong, and Souchong, and greens which go under the various trade names of Hi-son Sing-glow, Imperial, Tweng-Kay, and Gun Powder, and up until the 19th Century Century, though it may surprise you, Americans tended to prefer green tea, especially young Hi-son, as their favorites. Green teas arrived in Canton packed in boxes while black teas were brought in baskets to dry in warehouses. The ship's super supercargo or business agent had the responsibility of judging the quality of teas. Because teas could be swi- switched or adulterated, small samples of tea would be brewed in cups for sniffing and tasting but not for swallowing. Stale tea, maybe last year's tea, or chopped willow or elm leaves, are often added to

increase the bulk, and Prussian Blue or Chinese Yellow enhanced the color of tea while iron filings sometimes were even mixed into th- the tea to increase the weight. William Melrose, a Scottish tea merch- merchant, complained that he had been tasting and comparing tea all day, "until I was almost sick and my mouth sore." Wel- Well, once selected, the teas were packed into boxes and labelled for the long voyage home and a man named Amos Porter of Vermont, who actually became a China trader for a very brief time of his life in about 1802 to 18- 1803, talked about this er this this process of preparing the tea for shipment in boxes and it's kind of interesting how this image that was made for Western traders looks very idealised when you hear about how it actually happened. He said, "The tra- the chest is made half-full of tea poured in. Then the

coolie," which is a laborer, "steps in upon it, treads there for one or two hou- hours with the leather on his heel full of nails to enable him to stamp the har- the harder. He proceeds in that manner until the chest is full. These coo- coolies are of a low class of citizens and nor very cleanly. Their sweat, spittle and many fulsome substances are in- intermixed with this tea renders it, which renders it almost unfit for use." Which looks nothing like what you see there which all looks looks very very sweet and nice. Well, In the mid-17th Century century, Europeans first used tea as an exotic medicine an- and some physicians extolled its positive effects, while others damned its properties. And this is quite a bit to read but I'm just going to pick out a few things: Thomas Garway, who was a London tobacconist and coffee house proprietor, issued a broad sheet touting the remarkable curative properties

of the drink, tea. He said, among other things, "It helpeth with make the body. active and lusty. It helpeth the headache, giddiness and heaviness thereof thereof. It removeth obstructions of the spleen and it overcometh superfluous sleep. And act- actually it's interesting to note that both that all these three beverages, once they were introduced into the European market, all pretty much around 1650, all of them were introduced as expensive medicines. Well, by the early 18th century, tea had become much more valued as a popular beverage than as a medicine and its consumption increased dramatically to meet the growing demand, the English East India Company imported entire cargoes of tea and in 1725, 250,000 pounds of tea were imported but by 1800, at the end of that century, over 24,000,000 pounds of tea were arriving

yearly in England. Although tea's availability had increased, its price remained prohibitive. In the early 18th century, the price of a pound of tea tea averaged about 12 to 14 shillings, equal to one week's wages for a skilled craftsman. Despite its high cost, tea gradually replaced ale and beer as the beverage of choice for common folk. As early as 1734, one New Yorker complained, "I am credibly informed that tea in China cost the province yearly near the sum of 10,000 pounds and people that are least able to go to the expense must have their tea though their families want bread. They, I am told, often pawn their rings and plate," which is silver, "to gratify themselves in that piece of extravagance." Well, preparing, serving, and consuming tea required new containers and utensils and new skills with with which to use them successfully and

gracefully. Pouring hot water and dried leaves and drinking the brewed brewed liquid called for a variety of equipment and, as opposed to tea drinking in China, where the tea leaves were actually brewed in the tea cup, itself, tea drinking in early America and early Boston was a very elaborate affair. You might have had to have a tea kettle for brewing up boiling hot water, a tea pot, preferably in silver or in porcelain, a a tea canister for holding and keeping the leaves dry so that's for holding the tea leaves, a sugar bowl for keeping the chunks of white sugar -- not maple sugar, not brown sugar, not of that it; has to be the very expensive white sugar. Sugar tongs and for dispensing the white sugar to the

the teacups; creamer or a milk pot for those who preferred milk in their tea, tea cups and sau- saucers, tea spoons. Perhaps a spoon tray for holding those wet teaspoons off of your tea table, a slop bowl or a waste bowl, which is at the top which is for the used tea leaves or for any waste (you know, any extra cold liquid tea might have been been thrown in the slop bowl). And then you might need, of course, all those other things which include tables (you can't you can't drink this on the floor; you're going to have to have an appropriate number of chairs and you're going to have to have a specified for- form for serving tea which is called the tea table). Well this proliferation of highly specified -- specialized -- artifacts offered new opportunities for consumption and display. But more importantly, it turned

tea drinking into a ritual. The formal consumption of tea also encouraged elegant movements and manners and speech. One writer in New York City commented that the younger men of the city who were perceived as excessively awkward and ridiculous, when it became obvious that they were altogether unacquainted with the ceremony of at the tea table, it was recommended to them that they buy a set of china or if they should be less extravagant, earthenware, such as cups, saucers, slop basin, etcetera, and that they should employ a knowledgeable hostess to teach them the laws, rules, customs, phrases, and names of the tea utensils. Well, foreign travelers were often befuddled by the elaborate etiquette and the non-verbal communication used in American tea drinking. A prince on a visit to Philadelphia in 1782 found h- himself utterly unable to decline politely another cup of tea

tea and he wrote in his diary, he said "I partook of the most excellent tea and I should even be drinking it now, I believe, it the French ambassador had not charitably notified me at the 12th. cup that I must put my spoon across it when I wished to finish with this sort of warm water. He said to me it is almost as ill bred to refuse a cup of tea when it is offered to you as it would be in- indiscreet for the mistress of the house to propose a fresh one when the ceremony of the spoon had notified her that we no longer wish to partake it." So he just didn't know the nonverbal cue which was to put your teaspoon on top of the tea cup when you didn't want another cup of tea and since he didn't know that she's like, "Oh, he wants more, he wants more -- what he wants more" and of course it's her duty to supply him more because it's, it shows hospitality, it's an expensive beverage, and of course

he's a prince from France what is she going to do but continue to serve him more because he's saying he wants more. So, there you go. Well, of course you can't talk about tea without talking about its political associat,ions, particularly here, in the heart of Boston. Well, during the early days of the American Revolution, tea and tea drinking became very political and politicized. In the 1760s, er, the British government began to impose a tax on on tea, first through the Stamp Act of the 1765, and later with the Town- Townsend Act of 1767. Those tea taxes were repealed but um uh, the what happened was is that to demonstrate its power to tax the Colonies, Parliament retained that duty on tea and thereafter American started to purchase mostly smuggled tea from Holland. When Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773 to help the nearly bankrupt East

India Company by eliminating all tax on tea exported to America, the Company's tea, although still subject to that Townsend tax, was now cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea. Well, because the English East India Company appointed only certain American merchants to act as agents to distribute tea, many Amer- Americans rejected the East English -- er -- the East India Company tea. Throughout the Colonies, the Tea Act met with opposition; politicians and citizens resisted taxation without representation. In most places they stored this English East India Company's tea or sent it back but not here, in Boston. Led by Samuel Adams -- and you can see well, this is Bostonians tarring and feathering the Excise man, which is actually a very nasty thing to do. It's not quite that funny but you can see that they are drowning the Exci- Excise man with a pot of hot liquid with tea on the side of it and you

can see in the background the Bostonians pouring tea off off of a ship. Go forward once to talk a little bit about the Tea Party. Well, led by Samuel Adams the citizens of Boston would not permit the unloading of three ships, British ships, that arrived in Boston in November 1773 with 342 chests of tea. Massachusetts ?row? Governor, Thomas Hutchinson, however would not let the ship's return to Eng- England unless the colonists had paid the duty. On the evening of December 16th of 1773, a group of Bostonians, many of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the vessels, dumped the tea into Boston Harbor and goading Britain into harsh retaliations, particularly political -- a political act known as the 'Intolerable acts.' The laws close the port of Boston to trade and curtail the powers of the

Massachusetts Assembly and local town meetings, and provided for the housing of trou- troops in private houses and exempted British officials from trial in Mass- Massachusetts. Wow! um These acts further alienated Amer- American colonists and hastened the start of the American Revolution. A big ?whoops? on their part I suspect. Just quickly going through teas, since our ti- time is running out, um, quickly going through coffee, um, tea has has received a lot of ser- research and coffee, less so. Coffee is an evergreen shrub that's native to northeastern Africa and was probably domesticated for its caffeine-loaded berries in the Ethiopian Hi- Highlands around 800 A.D. Coffee beans are produced -- er-- in a complicated process of removing the seeds from the covering of pulp and muselage. The beans must be spread out to dry for several days and then heated in a drum. It seems that by the 14th and 15th centuries, the coffee plant was be-

being cultivated around the shores of the Red Sea and by 1638, coffee was being sold at rather exorbitant prices in Venice. where the poet, Sir George Sandys, said that the Turks -- and this is our area; of course, we know a little bit more about Yemen than we used to -- The Turks, he said, chatted most of the day over coffee which he described as, "black as soot and tasting not much unlike it." In the 17th Century, just like tea and chocolate, coffee was considered an exotic beverage and was used as an expensive medicine by the upper classes. Coffee was thought to, "quicken the spirits," "make the heart lithesome," it was "beneficial for di- digestion, is good against headache." Sounds good. Medical experts also warn that coffee was a diuretic and they thou- thought that that was bad because the body would er had to keep its humors an- in balance and they thought as a diuretic, it would drain the physical humors from the

body and that would not be a very good thing. But coffee, in its pos- positive aspects, was not in a inebriant; that was one thing about these three new beverages that was really so, um, really fabulous is that you weren't dr- drinking an alcoholic beverage for your breakfast. James Howe said, "'Tis found already that this coffee drink had caused a greater sobriety among among nations whereas formerly apprentices and clerks with others used to take their morning draft of ale, beer or wine, which, by the dizziness they cause in the brain ma- made many unfit for business, they now, they use now to play the good fellows in this wa- wakeful and civil drink. er --The rise of coffee houses was a direct result of this er, er importation of coffee, starting around 1650 in England. Er, Different professions gathered at different coffee houses. er- Insurers would hang out at Lloyd's coffeehouse -- and that's the formation

today of the Lloyd's insurance agency -- but people who were journalists or people who were ship owners or ship captains would gather at different coffee houses. And there's a typical scene called the Coffee house mob where people are drinking coff- coffee and coffee was the cheapest of these three new beverages and basically for the price of a penny you could get a cup of coffee and be able to read newspapers all day and smoke pipes. Unf- Unfortunately, the King Charles the 2nd was very disturbed by the proliferation of coffee houses in late 17th Century England and he called for the suppression of coffee houses because he thought they would be fomenting rebellion and if you tried to stamp out Starbucks today what would happen? You'd always, you would expect an, a revolt and that's what happened in England is that there was a big uproar of disapproval and the king backed down on the impl-

implementation of getting rid of coffee houses. There were some coffee houses in Boston um and coffee di- did also make its way into the private life of middle and upper class families in the 18th Century but it was never as popular as tea. In Boston you have Dorothy Jones receiving a license as early as 16- 70 to sell coffee and chocoletto in her in her tavern. In the Colonies, there seemed to be no distinct difference between a tavern and a coffee house. Many people think it's the Boston Tea Party that caused coffee to surge in in prominence. And there is a little bit of truth to that. It seemed tha- that after the Continental Congress passed a revolution -- a resolution -- again- against tea consumption, you do have very famous people like John Adams saying to his wife, Abigail, in 1774, "I a tea must be

universally renounced. I must be weaned. And sooner the better." But er coffee enjoyed this brief association with indep independence but eventually this beverage became as politically charged as tea. And with the American boycott of 1774, it included not only English goods but also goods from the English West Indies which included coffee from the islands of Jamaica, St. Vin- Vincent, Domenica and Grenada. So if the Boston Tea Party didn't cause tea, er, didn't cause coffee to be become, it didn't cause America to become a nation of coffee drinkers in the 19th Century, what was the reason for the drink's tremendous growth in America? Well, what actually happened is it's Brazil. Brazil's ability to increase coffee production without increasing price was really the was really one of the root causes for its tremendous growth in America.

When Briley, Brazil had gained its independence in 1822, it created the largest cof- coffee plantations in the world. The other factors that worked out to ma- make coffee America's number one drink was the immigration of millions of Northern Europeans, particularly Germans and Scandinavians who were all were, already predisposed to drinking coffee. And then finally war also assisted in coffee's assimilation into daily life. During the Civil War, the Union troops considered cof- coffee necessary for military victory. General Sherman called it the essential element of the ration and he concluded that, "coffee and sugar ration be carried along, even at the expense of bread, for which there are many substitutes." So don't get rid of coffee. And finally I'm going to talk about chocolate which is actually one of my favorite things and I'm sure one of yours, too. Um, For thousands of years I think we're just fascinated with chocolate. An-

and one of the things that I think is most unusual is how the cacoa plant grows is that it is unusual in that pods form not only at the It is a fruit. They not only form at the end of branches but they actually form along the trunks, as well and you can see this person is harvesting the pods off of the trunks and the branches. Er, when you split open those pods you get this very mucilaginous coated seeds inside which are left to ferment for about a week a week and then those seeds are spread out to dry, and then you then you roast those seeds and then you have to winnow off the outer shell that's, this cocoa shell, which today many people use or many businesses use for mul- mulch for your gardens and then you have to grind the resulting cacoa nibs inside into apa- paste and you can see he's doing this on I'm a mataté which is a

granite stone with a bed of charcoal, or a box of charcoal, underneath,and he's using what is called a ?'matate imano'? or in early American Eng- English would have been called a chocolate stone and roller. So moving along, a good cup of chocolate would have been ma- made by grading up these losanges of chocolate and adding them to wine or water or to milk. I just wanted to give you a comparison between the values of these three beverages. I said said coffee was the cheapest and it actually does prove true. This is a bill from Deerfield where I'm from. And you have 40 pounds of coffee 40 pounds of chocolate and 40 pounds of tea and each pound is wo- worth, as you can see, it's worth, er, what's at the en- end or before the strike. So coffee is worth 8 shillings a pound, chocolate is worth 10 shillings a pound and tea is worth a whopping

37 shillings per pound and 8 pence! So that's an amazing amount of money, right in the middle of the 18th century. So pound for pound, coffee was really gonna be most the most the most bang for the buck. As we said, chocolate was used as a medicine; I guess it's most prominent use was used as a good digestive. It was also used to help people restore their strength. You can almost think of choc- chocolate as a nutritional benefit, almost like Boost or Ensure. I- If you couldn't eat, if you were very ill and weak, you could dri- drink chocolate and that might help restore your strength and give you this incredibly fat nutritious, give you this big high caloric boost in order for you to get beyond your illness and renew your strength. You do have er

chocolate drinking in Boston and that's very prominently explained i- in the Judge Samuel ?Sool's? diary which is pretty amazing. Judge Samuel ?Sool? actually goes to visit his friend, Lieutenant Governor Stoughton, and what's interesting about what they do is he writes about chocolate and he says that Massachusetts -- this is Judge Sewal -- writes about what they about what they had for breakfast and he said Massachusetts and Mexico met at his honor's table because what they had for breakfast was chocolate and venison and what they had for chocolate was not necessarily what we would think of as confectionary chocolate the chocolate I'm talking about in the 18th century almost all of it was used to make beverage chocolate. It was ground up, it was combined with liquid and it was drunk as a beverage.

We do have evidence of chocolate being sold in taverns here with coffee, tea tea and chocolate being offered by Mary Ballard. You also have the use of chocolate, primarily taken, as opposed to tea and coffee which could be served after dinner, chocolate was primarily taken as a breakfast beverage. It gave people a la- large amount of calories early in the morning to get them going in the day and a little bit of stimulation; it contains ?theobromine?, a little bit of caffeine but it it certainly didn't give you that boost of of that stimulation it gave you a boost of energy. What's interesting about chocolate that's different from all these other, er, types of drinks, is that tea was very easy to make if you think about tea it's just taking tea leaves and pouring water over it. But

chocolate's a little bit different. The preparation of chocolate can be quite com- complicated. It's not like Swiss Miss is today. Swiss Miss is mostly nonfat powdered milk and sugar and cocoa. Beverage chocolate, what it did is it had, it was composed of basically 53 percent cocoa butter, so when you ground up that chocolate, these chocolate lozenges or tablets which were created and sold at local stores, and you mix that with wine or water, what you had was something if you let it settle, was almost going to turn into a vinaigrette. It was going to separate betw- the fat was going to start to float up to the top. So it was really the fat could be one of its detracting characteristics, as well as being extremely nourishing. Fat in the 18th century, we think of fat as been very bad in our diet today. Fat bad. You want to avoid fat, you want to go on a low-fat diet in the 18th century fat is

fabulous. You do so much work, you're expending, maybe just doing your normal work, about 4000 calories a day. So you need a lo- lot of energy food and fat is fantastic. So, thick with cocoa butter, the chocolate had to be milled with a stirring rod or a chocolate mill, also known as a "molé may" prior to pouring. This molé may was typically made of wood and measured about 10 to 12 inches. When whirrled between the hands, the notched or rougher knob produced a liquid with uniform consistency and it raised the desired froth. And that's one thing about chocolate in the 18th century which was essential is a good cup of chocolate. Had a very thick frothy head on top of it. And you can probably think of a good cup of chocolate today with marshmallows or with whipped cream on top of it that whipped cream is probably a culinary vestige. That froth that was

created by using the molé may or the chocolate milk and whipping up the chocolate between your hands. Chocolate, unfortunately, never receive the popularity of tea in colonial America. It had definite uses in the military as an energy food. It also was used in nursing ?arrived? by doctors as a food for the sick. It was also frequently used as a breakfast food. Um, It's interesting vessels for the production of chocolate are actually pretty rare but in Boston you're so lucky at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston they own the largest collection of 18th century silver chocolate pots, um, and they're act- actually ?there too? it's really spectacular. These are some that were are in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston's collection. You can see that they are not just all the sa- same, but the one unifying element to all these chocolate pots, and they're actually larger than you would think, they're not small things, is that they have a removable fi-

finial. You see this top knot here? Some of them actually, that one has a chain attached. All of these finials are removable an- And why is that? Why would you need a removable finial? What that reveals is there's a hole in the lid. And why would you need a hole in the lid and a removable fi- finial? It's because for chocolate, Exactly! You've got it is that you've got to have a hole in the in the lid for the insertion of that essential stirring rod that chocolate mill. So that is really... . If If you looked at it you would say, "well that could be, you know, that could be for tea, that could be for coffee especially the John Coney example that's up here. You- You know that could even -- and might have -- done double duty for serving of cof- coffee, but also did duty for the serving of chocolate in a very elegant way. One of the reasons why I became interested in chocolate is Historic Deerfield where I work also has one of these rare 18th century chocolate pots made by a Boston

silversmith named Zachariah ?Brigdon?. Um, just going to qui- quickly say that there were chocolate cups and saucers; this is an advertisement in a Boston newspaper that really does distinguish tea cups and chocolate cups. It's separate from, you know, you do have separate things for chocolate cups. Usually they're They're larger in capacity and have a are a little bit taller for the ac- accommodation of that frothy head. But actually it's quite interesting, and I will go forward, is that you find other things in newspapers that you're really not looking for and looking for is that people, you know, it's interesting. I use a mug you would think oh you use a mug for a lot of different things. Sometimes you you can use a mug for, you know, getting for drinking a cup of of coffee but it can also be used for getting kibble for your dog or be used to whole pens. And the same thing kind of applies to chocolate drinking is that yes you can use a very specific form for drinking

chocolate. But in this case it actually is. I found out out that in this very interesting murder case, or attempted murder ca- case, it revealed that a man named Mr. Humphrey Scarlett, his wife and two children in Boston Massachusetts, they accused their 2 enslaved African-Americans, a man named Yaw and a boy named Caesar, of attempting to murder them by mixing arsenic or what they called 'rat's bain,' into their morning cup of chocolate. The, um, Beyond being a fascinating case, the article also included a ref- reference as to how chocolate was made and consumed. Another slave in the family name Betty also fell ill when she licked her master's porringer after he had been to breakfast. So- So now we know, in addition to specific chocolate cups, porringers, these multi-purpose serving vessels, usually composed of silver or

pewter or pottery fashioned as a small bowl with a tab handle, could have been used to serve chocolate, as well. The form went out of style pretty quickly in England but Americans retain these useful forms to eat soup- soups and stews and thick pottages a, well into the 19th century and while I would have said maybe five years ago that these this would have been appropriate for soups and stews and other types of kind of thick liquids. I never would have thought that they would have drunk chocolate out of it this but now you know here's proof positive that these forms are used for something completely different. Well, I want to close by inviting you to Historic Deerfield which is about two hours west of here in western Massachusetts, just this side of the Berkshires, not too far. We reopen in mi- mid-April but on Saturday, February 13th, we have a special event that might interest you. you. We have something called the American Heritage Chocolate Festival and the day's

program presents historical information on chocolate and chocolate-related objects in the 18th century. And we also serve savory and sweet foods that are ma- made by the Deerfield Inn. There are demonstrations of cacoa roasting and grinding and a chocolate kind of ?worship? class by a local gourmet shop owner, and a silver smithing demonstration by a man named Steve Smi- Smithers and a lecture on the development of a chocolate museum that's going to be happening in Rhode Island. So I encourage you all to come. Well, thank you very much. [applause] WGBH: We have a few minutes for some questions. Get in back first. [soft vibrating hum] Male questioner: From what you're saying, it sounds like chocolate as of beverage came much earlier than chocolate as a solid food to to eat. So when did, how did that happen and when when did people start eating chocolate

more than they were drinking it? Lange: A very good question. Chocolate as a solid, as a beverage di- did come much earlier than chocolate is as a food. In the 18th century I guess you could say say maybe 99 percent of chocolate consumed would have been chocolate consumed as a as a beverage. There are very few recipes in the 18th century but there are some for some desserts that use chocolate, such as chocolate covered nuts. So that would have been used as as some desert foods but those are recipes that are few and far between where chocolate is used as a flavoring for dessert. But when you speak about confectionery chocolate a l- lot of the trouble was that the presence of cocoa butter is that it was a very very difficult substance to work with. And what made made the difference even though at the time it wasn't wasn't really not readily utilized was an 1828 when a Dutch chemist named Coen- Coenraad van Houten discovered the process of being able to squeeze out

the excess cocoa butter. and he was able to de-fat the cocoa butter down to from about 53 percent to about 30 percent and he squeezed that excess cocoa butter out, creating a powdered er chocolate which could which is what is now um, um, Cocoa powder and this excess cocoa butter resulted which at the time didn't really have a use, it was just sort of like, "Oh, this excess cocoa butter." So what it became useful in is the confectionery business which eventually gets started in the in the later 19th cent- century with a specifically French and Swiss confectionery chocolate manufactures along with American ones, as well, so you don't get a lot of of confectionery chocolate being produced until after the 1850s. Surprisingly enough, where you get the sort of burgeoning confectionery candy

industry coming along, which takes advantage of that because they needed that excess cocoa butter, I'm not a good confectionery chocolate historian, but they do use that excess cocoa butter to add back into to the chocolate at different stages of the process. Yes. Female questioner: I've seen chocolate being made and they said it's not a sweet beverage the way it way it, it's not a sweet thing the way you first get it. When ?----? add sweet to it, do you know? know? Well, when you're just a grinding the cacoa nibs, it's not sweet at all, it's an exceptionally bitter type of food. and so that was something when, I kinda glossed over this, but when er the first people who, it's a new world food, and the first people who used chocolate as as a food or as a beverage, were the were the people of you know the indigenous populations of

South America, the Incas the Maya, as well as as the Aztecs who were great lovers of chocolate. And what they did the Aztecs is that they ground up the chocolate they added peppers and they usually added some sort of grain like corn, and sometimes sometimes they added honey to make it a little bit sweeter, but usually they drank it as a savory beverage and and that beverage was only given to men because they thought it was way too stimulating to give to women and children. But as far as sugar is concerned, the first people to add sugar to the beverage were the Spanish when Hernando Cortez, the conquistador, took the beverage to Spain at about 1520. Tha- That's when sugar started to be added to to the beverage in order to make it very sweet and in the process, once you grind it, as you're grinding it on the matata, it takes the form even though when... . It's almost like peanuts if you've ever ground peanuts.

they start out as being very crumbly but then they almost take this honey or taffy, you know, very honey-like consistency because the oil is the fats is being expressed out of them. So it takes on this very honey-like consistency. And that's a good time that you can add your flavorings as you're grinding it in and so when people in the 18th century, when they receive this chocolate, it usually did have some sugar added to it. But in recipes you often say that sugar could be added to it to your own taste. WGBH: Amanda, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.