It’s Chocolate National Week in UK!
The eating of chocolate has long been associated with love. Apparently, the Aztec emperor, Monteczuma (c1502) drank fifty cups of chocolate a day to enhance his ardour.Chocolate contains Phenylethylamine and Serotonin both of which also occur naturally in the human brain. These mood lifting substances are released into the nervous system when we are happy and when we are experiencing feelings of passion, creating a a rise in blood pressure and heart rate and inducing a feeling of well being. So, when you need a lift – eat chocolate!
The first chocolate house was opened in London by a Frenchman. The shop was called the The Coffee Mill and Tobacco Roll. Costing 10 to 15 shillings per pound, chocolate was considered a beverage for the elite class.
1502 – Christopher Columbus introduces chocolate to Spain from his fourth voyage to the New World in 1502 but not as the product we know today. It was only consumed as a drink. The word „chocolate” was derived from the Aztec word xocolatl which means bitter water.
1615 – Anne of Austria (wife of Louis XIII) declares chocolate as the drink of the French Court , although this was only after much skepticism, as initially it was considered a „barbarous product and noxious drug”.
1640 – chocolate finds its way to England, among other European countries.
1657– the drink becomes a best seller in England and excessive duties are imposed on chocolate. It takes almost 200 years before the duty is dropped.
1828 – Dutch chocolate maker Conrad J. Van Houten created the hydraulic cocoa press. The press enabled chocolate makers to crush the „nibs,” or centers, of roasted cacao beans into a paste (Chocolate Liquor). After crushing, some of the cocoa butter was extracted.
1848 – English chocolate maker Joseph Storrs Fry created the first eating chocolate by further refining the cocoa, adding sugar, and mixing the cocoa butter back in.
1875 – Swiss Daniel Peter added condensed milk to chocolate and marketed the first solid milk chocolate bar.
Have a bar of chocolate! It makes your day sweeter! 🙂
Engleza MultiSensory 