Chocolate, America’s Favorite Sweet Treat

[February 13, 2023 | Montrose Mirror | By Kathryn R. Burke]

Did you know that Ben Franklin recommended chocolate as a cure for Smallpox? (Pity it didn’t work on the Aztecs—5-8 million people died of it after the Spanish invasion.) Colonial women of the 1700s were warned against consuming it, especially in the spring, because it was an “inflamer” that stimulated the libido. (Still does, and they ignored it just as we applaud it–probably for the same reasons.) Children were not allowed to drink it because it was a stimulant. (Which it still is; think about how crazy kids get when they eat too much chocolate Halloween candy.) Finally, early prototypes of the machine gun pre-date the making of milk chocolate. (Gives death by chocolate a new perspective.)

Chocolate—food of the gods, gift of governments and sweethearts, source of vitality, stimulant for socialization and sexual desire. Once considered more valuable than gold (and used by Mesoamericans as currency), chocolate has been weaving its magic for at least 5,500 years (that we know of). The earliest historical artifacts come from Mesoamerica (Central and South America), where it was served as a frothy, bitter drink, made into hallucinogenic potions and also used it for human sacrifice. (Read story here.)

For about 90% of its history, chocolate was a drink, not a food. That changed after the Spanish introduced it to Europe in the 1500s. After learning to sweeten it, chocolate caused a chocomania across Europe, and by the 1800s grew in popularity.

1600s. There are various theories on how chocolate first arrived in the colonies. History records that it first arrived in Florida on a Spanish ship in 1641, although it is likely Mesoamericans had been trading it with their neighbors to the north for centuries. Some historians think that drinking chocolate spread from England to its North American colonies. More likely, it came to our coast about the same time it arrived in England, via the regular maritime trade routes from the West Indies to the major colonial ports of Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Newport, Rhode Island. The first American chocolate house opened in Boston in 1682. (Like those in Europe, it was known to be sinful and a hotbed of political intrigue.) Chocolate ice cream was also invented about this time.

1700s. By 1773, cocoa beans were a major American colony import, but chocolate was still expensive and difficult to make. It remained a drink primarily for the wealthy…with a few interesting exceptions. In 1773, chocolate became the preferred breakfast drink, after rebels threw about 350 chests of tea into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party. During the Revolutionary War (1775-83) chocolate was provided to the military as rations. When funds ran short, it was sometimes given to soldiers as payment instead of money. (Following in the Aztec’s footsteps?)

1800s. For much of the 19th Century, chocolate was enjoyed in the U.S., as it was in Europe, as a beverage. Milk was often added, and it was usually sweetened and/or flavored with spices. It was still expensive, thus mostly reserved for the elite. Eating it as a solid was difficult; it was hard and difficult to chew. Newspaper advertisements for “solid eating chocolate” appeared mid-century, but chocolates “were not well received by the public because of their coarse and gritty texture.”

The cocoa press and other inventions during the Industrial Revolution ushered in the modern era of chocolate by enabling it to be used as a confectionery ingredient. The resulting drop in production costs made chocolate much more affordable. Swiss innovators chocolatiers developed the first appealing eating chocolate in the 1870s.