Amazing Facts About Chocolate

• The Aztecs used the cacao bean as a unit of currency.
• The Aztecs drank chocolate in a bitter drink which also contained chilies, cornmeal and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Imagine that!
• In 1879, in Switzerland, Rodolphe Lindt developed "conching", a way of kneading chocolate during manufacture, which gives it a smooth consistency.
• The botanical name for the cacao bean is Theobroma, which is Greek for "food of the gods".
• The cacao bean was first brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors in 1528. Traders probably spelt the name incorrectly, hence "cocoa" instead of "cacao".
• In seventeenth-century Europe, chocolate became popular as a sweet drink made with sugar and vanilla.
• Henri Nestle was the first to create milk chocolate by adding condensed milk to the mixture when making chocolate bars.
• Cacao trees produce pods, each of which contains 20 to 50 cacao beans.
• Cacao beans are fermented, dried, roasted and ground before being used to produce chocolate.
• White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, which is the fat extract from crushed roasted cacao beans. White chocolate contains no caffeine.
• Cocoa butter makes a sensuous massage cream.
• There are different varieties of cacao beans with different flavours, much the same as there are different varieties of grapes which produce different wines.
• Chocolate liquor - extracted from crushed, roasted beans - is solid at room temperature but melts at 92 degrees Fahrenheit, round about tongue temperature and hence the melt-in-the-mouth pleasure effect.
• Chocolate contains hundreds of chemicals including the stimulant phenylethylamine, which creates a "feel-good factor".
• The word chocolate comes from the Aztec word, "cacahuatl".
• Chocolatiers have their own technical terms, for example, "praline" which means a mixture made from a paste of chocolate and crushed hazelnuts; or "ganache", which is a mixture of chocolate and cream with a smooth texture. The ganache chocolate was born when a French 19th-century apprentice knocked some cream into a tub of chocolate. His boss called him, "un ganache" - an imbecile!
• In the eighteenth century, chocolate was regarded as an aphrodisiac (it still is!). The celebrated Italian libertine, Giacomo Casanova, took chocolate before bedding his conquests.