Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma Cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America, with its earliest documented use around 1100 BC.
The seeds of the cacao tree have an intense bitter taste, and must be fermented to develop the flavour. After fermentation, the beans are dried, then cleaned, and then roasted, and the shell is removed to produce Cacao nibs.
Until the 16th century, no European had ever heard of Cacao, a popular drink of Central and South American peoples. It was not until the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs that chocolate began to be imported to Europe. In Spain it quickly became a court favourite.
Within a century it had spread and become popular throughout the European continent. But even with Cacao harvesting becoming a regular business, only royalty and the well-connected could afford to drink such an expensive import. Sure enough, the Spanish began growing Cacao beans on plantations in Africa with a native workforce to help manage them.
In 1689, noted physician and collector Hans Sloane developed a chocolate drink in Jamaica which was initially used by apothecaries, but was later sold to the Cadbury brothers in 1897.
Chocolate in its solid form was invented in 1847. Joseph Fry & Son discovered a way to mix some of the cocoa butter back into the ‘dutched’ chocolate, and added sugar, creating a paste that could be moulded.
The result was the first modern chocolate bar.
Unsweetened baking chocolate (bitter chocolate) contains primarily cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions. Much of the chocolate consumed today is in the form of sweet chocolate, combining cocoa solids, cocoa butter or other fat, and sugar. Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate that additionally contains milk powder or condensed milk. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, sugar, and milk but no cocoa solids.
In 1879 the Cadbury Co. relocated to an area of what was then north Worcestershire, on the borders of the parishes of Northfield and King’s Norton centred on the Georgian built Bournbrook Hall.
With their Quaker background the Cadbury brothers were staunch tee-totallers and the district around the factory has been ‘dry’ for over 100 years, with no alcohol being sold in pubs, bars or shops.
Surprisingly. the local residents have fought to maintain this unique situation, winning a court battle in March 2007 with Britain’s biggest supermarket chain Tesco, to prevent it selling alcohol in its local outlet.