A cultural history of chocolate - Unit 12

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Matching · Close-up C2, National Geographic Learning

You are going to read an extract from a book on chocolate. For questions 1–10, choose from the sections (A–E). The sections may be chosen more than once.

Chocolate – that delicious, dark brown, mood-altering delight – for more than 3000 years was consumed primarily as a drink. While our modern conception of chocolate as a solid bar differs from its earliest mode of culinary delivery, the cultural significance has stayed relatively constant across the centuries; it is a currency of pleasure, luxury and ritual. Cacao and its seeds, or cocoa beans, have historical significance with the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec peoples – a significance that depends upon the context each culture provides. An Olmec site has yielded at least one ceramic container that evidences the preparation of cacao as a beverage dating to roughly 1900 BC. The Olmec were the first major civilisation in Mesoamerica. Unfortunately, they did not use written language, so we know very little besides what their abandoned sites can tell us, but it is generally agreed that they were the first to domesticate the cacao tree, that the beverages they made from cacao were used for medicinal and ceremonial purposes, and that their cultural lineage extended through the Maya and Aztec Empires.

The Maya, in contrast, left behind a rich record of data regarding their fondness for cacao drinks, which they associated with the gods. Incidentally, Carl Linnaeus, founder of taxonomy, clearly had this legend in mind when he named the plant Theobroma cacao, in the eighteenth century –Theobroma from the Greek for 'food of the gods' and 'cacao' being a European derivative of the indigenous Mayan kakau. The Maya also had a hieroglyph representing cacao in their art, and left behind depictions of rudimentary recipes for production. For the Maya, the cacao beverage was a treasured drink of the ruling class, and a treat for families who cultivated cacao in their home gardens. For the drink, the beans were fermented, dried and roasted, much like today, then ground and mixed with a variety of spices to form a paste that was heated and poured from vessel to vessel to produce a frothy foam.

For the Aztecs, cacao beans were both a valuable commodity and a major form of currency and tribute payment in their empire. The neighbouring towns of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco each had large, well-organised markets that were visited by all the surrounding townspeople. Watched over by special government officials who ensured that weights, measures and prices matched the quality of goods, the Aztec market included both vendors of prepared chocolate and dealers of raw beans. The honest cacao seller would divide the beans into separate piles according to their origin. Dishonest dealers, meanwhile, used various ruses to sell counterfeit beans, artificially colouring inferior lots of cacao, or even disguising worthless avocado seeds with cacao hulls to fool customers. The Aztecs also used cacao ritually, both to be drunk during ceremonies and even symbolically in acts of human sacrifice. In this context, the cacao pod would symbolise the human heart.

There are competing theories on the etymology of the word 'chocolate', but most have at least some connection to the Aztec language of Nahuatl. Some attribute the word to the Nahuatl word xocolātl meaning 'bitter water' – and it was indeed bitter, being sweetened with honey for those who preferred it that way. Another theory suggests the word is a hybrid of a Mayan word chokol, which means 'hot' and the Nahuatl word atl meaning water, thus 'hot water'. It could also be a combination of kakau and atl, simply 'cacao water'. Any way you look at it, the word 'chocolate' itself represents a combination of Maya and Aztec cultures; an appropriate blend considering the historical transmission of knowledge through the cacao trade. When enthusiasm for chocolate spread across Europe, European colonies in Africa and Malaysia began to raise 'cocoa', as the cacao bean came to be called in Europe.

It was not until 1828 that chocolate changed from a sacred drink to the solid bar we know today, through the addition of cocoa butter. Not only did Coenraad Johannes van Houten of the Netherlands create the process of manufacturing cocoa butter, but he also discovered how to treat chocolate with alkalis to remove the bitter taste that had until that point been characteristic of chocolate. While the addition of chilli had long since been dropped from the recipes by Europeans, vanilla was often retained, along with milk and sugar, the latter being unavailable to the Aztecs. Thus, chocolate as we know it came into existence after several thousand years of being consumed in liquid form with a pungent, bitter taste. These days, producers of chocolate are experimenting even further, by adding not just sugar and milk, but chilli, lavender, mint and other flavours, giving us new forms, new uses and new tastes, all continually inspired by its divine origins.

A cultural history of chocolate

the modern classification system of all living things

the commercial applications available for the cacao crop

the derivation of the word chocolate in different cultures

a process that made chocolate more palatable to other cultures

the ability of chocolate to influence human feelings and emotions

the cultivation of the beans outside of their native environment

the ingredient that had initially been rejected by European chocolate makers

archaeological evidence in support of the consumption of liquid chocolate

instances of fraudulent commercial practices in the cacao trade

the steps required to prepare the raw beans for use as chocolate

In which section are the following mentioned?

Available as a free printable PDF worksheet with an optional answer key.

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