RSC Blog

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! While the tradition of anonymous gifts (such as those left by “St Valentine”) is waning, one thing you can’t get away from is chocolate. A dozen red roses hardly stands up to a box of red Roses these days.

So here’s a double chocolate treat from the RSC, to get you in the mood: a snippet of science info to help you get the full effect from your choccies, then a brief yet fascinating history of chocolate in Central America.

The sixty-second science savour

Chocolate expert Stephen Beckett (who happens to have written an excellent book on the subject) told me that your average piece of chocolate takes about a minute to melt in the mouth. The cocoa butter is liquid at body temperature and this of course provides maximum surface area for the flavour molecules to interact with your tongue and mouth.

So having spent a small fortune on the perfect Valentine’s chocolates, be sure to stop your loved ones from gobbling them down uncontrollably – there’s not a hope they’ll be getting the full effect unless they’re savouring each bite for 60 seconds or more.

With that practical tip out the way, I present with pleasure a brief history of chocolate written by Ian Foster, a British science history buff with near-limitless knowledge and enthusiasm, and friend of the RSC.

—

From Mesoamerica with Love

The tradition of giving chocolate on Valentine’s Day is connected to an ancient practice originating in Mesoamerica, where the early civilisations explored the mystical and magical effects of the plants and animals around them.

Chocolate was originally a drink made from the fruit of the cacao tree which grew wild in the lowland jungles of Central America in the shade of the jungle canopy. The legends of the ancient people tell of a heavenly garden where mankind and the Gods once lived in harmony – until mankind was banished from the garden as a punishment for attempting to become equal to the Gods.

Life on the outside was hard, and the God Quetzalcoatl was fond of mankind, so he brought them the cacao tree from the garden to make their life easier. This tree bore the fruit that was the magical food of the Gods and the secret of their power. Quetzalcoatl stayed with Mankind and taught them the fruit’s uses before returning to the Garden, promising he would return some day. The modern scientific name for cacao as given by Linneaus is Theobroma Cacao, which in Greek translates to “Cacao, Food of the Gods”.

The fruit of the cacao tree is a rugby ball-shaped pod containing 20-40 beans, which are encased by a sweet white flesh something like lychee. The flesh can be sucked from the bean and makes a delicious drink rarely experienced outside of the cacao growing areas. The early Central American people – including the Olmecs, Toltecs and Maya – fermented and dried the beans before roasting them. They sometimes extracted a liquid from the beans during fermentation which was drunk as a wine, and was very intoxicating owing to the ethanol content caused by the fermentation.

After roasting, the beans were ground to a paste and mixed usually with hot water to make an oily liquid. This was poured many times from a height between two containers to create a foaming liquid and consumed by the pleasure-seeking people of the Maya as a luxurious and health-giving drink. It was also an important part of their rituals such as marriage ceremonies, where couples gave each other the chocolate drink in preparation for the wedding night experience.

The drink was a bitter elixir and the makers had no sugar but used honey, vanilla and ground maize to add body and flavour. Vanilla is known to have an aroma reminiscent of breast milk and honey is linked to sex in many cultures along with nectar as the high energy fuel of the hummingbird.

There was no milk in this chocolate and it was a potent and stimulating concoction that Europeans found hard to stomach. It was used for its physical effects which were found to aid in providing strength and vitality as described by the English doctor Henry Stubbe in his book about chocolate, published in 1662 and titled ‘the Indian Nectar’.

“The Indians, as they in all things almost affect a simplicity, so in the making of Chocolata they did not multiply ingredients; and cared rather to preserve their health, then to indulge their palates,” wrote Stubbe.

It is said that prisoners who were awaiting execution were given chocolate to calm them and increase their vitality – before facing the prospect of having their beating heart cut out. A red vegetable dye called achiote was sometimes added, but priests and shaman would also add their own blood to ritual chocolate.

On the arrival in what is now Mexico of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez, he was welcomed warmly by the Aztec emperor Moctezuma, who may have believed this stranger was the incarnation of Quetzalcoatl, who had promised to return. Moctezuma shared his secrets with Cortez, including the chocolate drink, and consumed 50 servings of chocolate from golden goblets before retiring to the pleasures of his harem. Cortez and his men were told that the drink was “effectual to provoke lustful desires towards women”.

Moctezuma sometimes enjoyed chocolate chilled after being poured over snow brought from the high mountains. The cacao beans were valued more highly than gold and Cortez recognised that there was something very special about this bitter drink, which a soldier could use to maintain his strength for days while consuming no other sustenance.

The Aztecs received cacao in tribute from people they had conquered in lowland areas and the use of it was reserved mostly for males of the nobility. Women were responsible for making the chocolate drink and enjoyed it usually when sharing it with a man

Stubbe wrote “for the benefit of the married” that “Let us take it for a certain position that What yields the best Blood, and promotes all naturall expurgations, is the best of Food and Physick. And that Chocolata is such…Thus solid and substantial Butcher’s meat, and the like, are the only lustful sustenance to a good constitution, and strong body injured to vigorous Exercises; for the performances of the bed are not created therein. Ease and soft-lying do but effeminate the body, and they become unable to concoct strong meats: and the Seed becomes worse-digested, and, as I may call it, worse relished for the Gusto of the Womb; the erection is less vigorous, and the spirituascency of the seed little; and the ejaculation too sudden, weak and improportionate to the ardours, and desires, and expectation too of the Female Paramour”.

The title of the popular novel Like Water for Chocolate, by the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel, recalls the ancient phrase describing the sexual passion of a person being as “hot” as water that is necessary for melting chocolate to create the chocolate drink. The 16th century Spanish traveller Hernandez wrote “This potion was not used for sustenance alone, or as a drink invented as an enforcing necessity, but, out of a luxurious designe.”

The 17th century Spanish doctor Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma wrote that chocolate “vehemently incites to Venus”. Chocolate was believed to boost breast milk production in women and generally stimulate the body to produce bodily fluids which Stubbe noted “are to be discharged out of the body by their several passages, one whereof are the spermatick vessels”

Chocolate came to be popularly consumed in Central America and the Caribbean, especially first thing in the morning. It was used as a love potion by women and men who would spike it with all manner of sexual ingredients to encourage the amorous desires of the drinker.

Its magical and spiritual qualities were believed to be the most important aspect of chocolate and farmers would abstain from sex for two weeks before planting. The taste and sensations were often savoured after eating in a period of meditation. Certain rare types of cacao plants were protected and cultivated by highly skilled botanists and reserved for the most special occasions.

So now on Valentine’s Day chocolate is once again used to stimulate desires, packaged in elaborate golden wrapping and presented to someone special as it was in Moctezuma’s time. The key to the aphrodisiac qualities of chocolate is the effect it has on the body in combination with the influence on the pleasure and sensory elements of the mind. But of course it has to be good quality chocolate – a rare thing in the modern world.

—

Bonus: from the wonderful webcomic xkcd.com