The Forgotten History of Chocolate Candy

this episode brought to you by Magellan TV chocolate is yummy and the world agrees according to market research firms I am the total value of the global chocolate market in 2017 with some hundred three billion dollars and while no sane person should require an excuse to eat chocolate nonetheless we continue to think them up on Valentine's Day February 14th Americans will spend about 1.4 billion dollars on candy and consume some 36 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and while they dried in fermented seeds of the Theobroma cacao plant had been part of human cuisine and culture for as long as 5,000 years the stuff that you find in a box of chocolates is a surprisingly recent invention it is history but deserves to be remembered I'm sure you've heard me talk about Magellan TV it's a new kind of streaming documentary service that is run by filmmakers that has more than 2000 documentaries that are worth watching I want to share with you one I've been watching lately that I can't recommend highly enough it's called the private lives of the tutors the tutors are probably the most famous of the families of English monarchs and the five Tudor monarchs are an intriguing lot the series delves into an understanding not just of the Tudor dynasty but of how people actually lived in the Tudor period and things that you just won't find in history books it's yet another truly fascinating series that reminds me why I love my subscription to Magellan TV I'm a big fan of history documentaries but you might also enjoy science space or nature all of which Magellan TV offers Magellan TV has the richest and most varied history content available anywhere ancient modern current early modern war biography and even not historical John was like science and crime are historical in nature you can watch private lives of the tutors anytime anywhere on your television laptop or mobile device Magellan is compatible with roku amazon firetv Apple TV Google Play and iOS you can even cast it from your phone to your TV and the best part is that Magellan TV is offering a one month free membership trial to my viewers if you haven't signed up already you really should and all you need to do is use the link that's in the description the broma cacao is a small evergreen tree native to Mesoamerica when pollinated the see of the cacao tree eventually forms a sheath around 20 inches long that hangs from the tree trunk the pod will include some 30 to 40 brownish red almond shaped beings embedded in a sweet viscous pulp as the first uses by humans of the pods the cacao tree dates back to prehistory it's unclear where the human love affair with chocolate began ancient omote pots and vessels from around 1500 BC have been found with traces of theobromine a stimulant compound found in chocolate but as the beans themselves have a bitter taste due to the alkaloids in them it's possible that the Olmecs were consuming the sweet pulp and not the beans that Pope may actually been fermented so that the first human use of cacao was as an alcoholic beverage again it's not clear when the beans of the pod which are dried and roasted to create cocoa beans were first used by humans traces of brown powder containing theobromine have been found in Mayan pots dating to more than 1500 years ago the so called dresden codex a Mayan manuscript from around the 13th century describes two cows being the food of the rain God and the similarly dated Madrid codex posits that the gods shed their blood on a cacao pod as part of its production those legends were the genesis of the scientific name for the cacao tree Theobroma cacao is derived from greek and roughly means food of the gods many of us in the modern world still find that description apt but the Mayan use of cacao beans which involve letting the beans ferment and then grinding them into a paste was consumed as a drink the piece was spiced and then combined with liquid to make a frothy drink the first European encounters with the drink did not come until the 16th century where it was seen in the Aztec Court the aztec lands were not suitable for the cacao tree of it may have specifically conquered Mayan lands in order to get cacao beans as tribute in both cultures the drink was apparently rare is only found in the sorts of vessels that suggest that use was confined to the wealthy the drink spiced with peppers was a stimulant and thought to have aphrodisiac properties the roasted beans were so rare that they were used as currency but that drink was bitter not sweet in fact the Spanish word for the drink choco latte was derived from the Aztec language and roughly translates as bitter drink it understandably took some time for Europeans to embrace this bitter drink which was mostly used as a medicinal for upset stomach until Europeans started to sweeten it into something more like the hot chocolate we enjoy today and its popularity rose as processing cacao beans is a labor-intensive process the growing popularity of the drink also drove a slave trade as slaves were imported from West Africa to Mesoamerica to work the cacao plantations by the 17th century chocolate was popular throughout Europe although it was expensive and generally limited to the wealthy it was common enough in the colonies that rations for officers in the Continental Army included chocolate and was regularly sold by settlers to the Troops at the time was considered to have energizing and nourishing properties and was often mixed with wine sugar and flour to make something called wine chocolate so in the as much as 5,000 year human history with the cacao plant still all we were using chocolate for was to make chocolate drinks I mean seriously no chocolate bits with chewy centers no no candy bars made of impossibly small squares not even a chocolate chip in 1764 an American doctor named James Baker came up with a way to press chocolate powder into what he called chocolate cake but it it wasn't like a chocolate bar or even anything like a chocolate cake it was really just pressed chocolate powder that was broken up in order to make more chocolate drink and by the way if you've ever bought a product called baker's chocolate and you thought it got that name because it's chocolate that's made for baking you're wrong baker's chocolate got its name from the company that dr. Baker started and that brand name is now owned by Kraft Heinz and you know what I like hot chocolate just as much as the next guy I mean come on how long could it take to come up with an M&M the breakthrough came in 1828 when a dunst chocolatier named Casper Asst Van Houten patented a hydraulic press that removed a large amount of the natural fat called cocoa butter that was in the nub of the cocoa bean that created cake that could be pulverized into chocolate powder the initial idea was to create a product that could be more easily dissolved into liquid to make more chocolate drinks Manhattan's son Conrad then developed a process that added alkaline salts potassium or sodium bicarbonate stew the powder this allowed the powder dissolve more easily in water but also reduced the alkaline taste producing a milder taste the process creates something called Dutch chocolate and it is the basis of virtually every chocolate product today if you like chocolate ice cream or chocolate cake think of an Houghton chocolate is still sold today under the Van Houten brand and as a possible service to humanity caspere's Van Houten neglected to renew the patent on his device and so in 1838 the rest of the world got to experiment with all the wonderful possibilities that his invention allowed it was the manufacturing developments of the Ben mountains and others that were said to have democratized chocolate from a treat of the wealthy to a favourite of the masses chocolate got a new improvement in 1847 thanks to the British chocolate ears Jas fry and Sons the company had been the first to industrialize the process of chocolate making by patenting a process in 1897 that ground cocoa beans with a watt steam engine in 1847 the company developed a process whereby Dutch chocolate powder was combined with sugar and then had cocoa butter added back in creating a malleable solid the first mass-producible chocolate bar in 1866 jazz France unscrewed the first mass-produced filled chocolate bar the chocolate cream bar and in 1873 they produced the first chocolate Easter Egg another british chocolatier Cadbury Brothers started producing a chocolate bar in 18-49 by 1861 Cadbury was producing fancy chocolates in boxes it was the Cadbury brothers who had the brilliant idea of linking chocolates to Valentine's Day the Christian feast day of st. Valentine has become as associated with romantic love during the 14th century when the concept of courtly love a romanticized chivalric idea flourished by the 18th century Britain had developed a tradition where couples express their love for each other by giving gifts on Valentine's Day in 1868 Cadbury started producing fancy chocolates in boxes shaped like a heart forever linking the holiday with the food of the gods in 1857 the Swiss chocolatier named Daniel Peter was working on a process to introduce milk to chocolate previously powdered milk had been added but the consistency was not smooth Peter finally found success when it got help from his neighbor Henry Nestle who developed a process for condensing milk to be used as infant formula the result was the delight today known as milk chocolate in 1879 the two formed the Nestle corporation which is today the largest food company in the world in 1879 Swiss chocolatier Rudolph Flint developed a conch in the mechanical stirring machine allowed an even distribution of cocoa butter and a lot of unpleasant aromas in the chocolate to evaporate by alleged lint discovered the process by accident would be accidentally left a mixing machine on overnight the result was chocolate with a smoother texture superior Roma and better melting characteristics chocolate before conching had a somewhat gritty texture in 2019 Lintz revenues were some four point three billion dollars surprisingly one of the biggest names in chocolate Milton Hershey didn't start with chocolate Hershey's first successful candy venture was making caramel in 1886 Hershey founded the Lancaster caramel company of Lancaster Pennsylvania his caramel candies made with fresh milk were popular and the company employed 1300 workers by 1894 however in 1893 Hershey shot chocolate making machines at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago seeing opportunity in 1894 he incorporated the Lancaster caramel company and created the Hershey Chocolate Company as a subsidiary but deciding that caramel was just a fad but chocolate is a permanent thing he sold the Lancaster caramel company to the American caramel company and decided to focus on chocolate in 1907 he introduced the iconic bite sized chocolate candy known as the Hershey's kiss Ruth graves Wakefield and then keep her from Massachusetts made her contribution to the world of chocolate in 1938 Wakefield and her husband owned an inn in Plymouth County Massachusetts called the Toll House where her home-cooked meals were famous in 1938 she created a recipe that used broken up pieces of a Nestle semi-sweet chocolate bar creator famous Toll House chocolate crunch cookie she gave Nestle the right to use her recipe in exchange for $1 and a lifetime supply of Nestle chocolate Nestle then started making chocolate chips specifically for baking cookies with Wakefield's recipe on the back today an estimated 7 billion chocolate chip cookies are consumed in the United States annually and Nestle produces about 250 million chocolate chips a day in 1927 a former Hershey employee named Henry Burnett Ries invented another popular chocolate confection despite the advertising claim that a chocolate lover and the peanut butter lover bumped into each other exclaiming you got your chocolate it might be the butter and you got to our peanut butter in my chocolate Reese actually developed a peanut butter cup because the cup part made mass production easier the Reese's company merged with Hershey in 1963 and Reese's peanut butter cups are among the most popular confections in the United States about 1.1 billion Reese's peanut butter cups were sold in the United States in 2013 one of Hershey's biggest competitors is Mars Incorporated founded by Franklin Clarence Mars in 1911 Franklin sent Forrest went on to develop the popular Milky Way and Mars candy bars but is perhaps most famous for the little chocolate candy with an M on it Mars developed his Kitty Kotik confection in 1940 but the drums of the Second World War were already beating and it was clear that chocolate would be rationed Mars made an agreement with Bruce Murray the son of the then president of the Hershey Company Murray sent a deal with Mars to provide some capital and the chocolate to make the new candy in exchange for a 20% partnership the candy was popular with soldiers during the second world wars that traveled well in all environments so during the war M&Ms for Mars and Murray were made under exclusive contract to the US Armed Forces using Hershey chocolate the supply in military rations made the candy very popular after the war that could again be sold to the general public and Mars bought Murray out to sell the candy under the Mars brand it is sometimes assumed that Mars stole the idea of M&Ms from the UK company Roundtree & Company which produces the very similar Smarties candy however forest Mars was good friends with George Harris a member of the or who had married into the Roundtree family and the two had made a gentlemen's agreement to not compete with their similar candies that was relatively easy as the right to the name Smarties is trademark to another manufacturer in the United States who makes a sugar candy called Smarties peanut M&Ms were introduced in 1954 despite the fact that Forrest Mars was allergic to peanuts the industry still struggles with the sourcing for cocoa beans with West African cocoa beans particularly being criticized for the use of child labour of the destruction of native forests the issue has to do with complex problems in the sourcing chain things like transparency agricultural techniques and poverty Timothy McCoy the rural cocoa Foundation was quoted in the 2018 issue of raconteur magazines hang if the problem was simple we would solved it a long time ago and moved on but in the end is up to we the consumers to hold the industry accountable over the years many claims have been made about the health effects of chocolate as the Guardian newspaper noted in 2018 chocolate has been touted as a treatment for agitation anemia angina and asthma has been said to awaken appetite and act as an aphrodisiac you may have noticed we're still just on the letter a and while some of those turn-of-the-century health claims for chocolate seem ridiculous you might recently I've seen newspaper reports that suggested that research shows that chocolate prevents strokes but unfortunately the Guardian notes that such claims are overstated chocolate is in fact a high-calorie food that should be seen only as a treat include some chemicals that can be harmful for example triggering migraines for some people The Guardian quotes nutritionist dr. Dwayne Muller who's had that chocolate is probably not healthy but it's not harmful if it is enjoyed and sensible amounts I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe you [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 350,138

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, chocolate, theobroma cacao tree, chocolate candy, history of food

Id: NAaguWFjEPE

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2020