The History of Chocolate

Cacao first used in the upper Amazon (about 3300 BC) (About 5,300 years ago)

At Santa Ana-La Florida in southeast Ecuador, a settlement of the Mayo-Chinchipe culture, archaeologists found traces of cacao inside pottery and stone tools. Three separate tests agreed: cacao starch grains, absorbed residues of theobromine, and fragments of ancient cacao DNA. The 2018 paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution, led by Sonia Zarrillo, called it the earliest evidence of cacao use anywhere in the Americas. It also moved the likely birthplace of cacao domestication from Mesoamerica to the upper Amazon, where genetic studies already placed the tree's origin.

Where it came from: Excavations at Santa Ana-La Florida began in 2002. Michael Blake of the University of British Columbia noticed the site's vessels and pursued the cacao question. The cacao traces came from household areas and from tombs of apparently high-status people, so cacao was part of both daily life and burial ritual.

Where it is now: The plant and the habit travelled north. Cacao drinks appear in Mesoamerica about 1,500 years later, which is where the Olmec and Maya made chocolate famous.

• Theobromine, a compound found in cacao seeds, turned up in 25 ceramic and 21 stone artifacts from the site.
• Before this study, the oldest known evidence of cacao use came from Central America and dated to about 1900 BC.
• A separate 2018 study by O. E. Cornejo and colleagues, in Communications Biology, found that yield-lowering mutations built up in cacao during domestication in Central America and Mexico, around 3,600 years ago.

Try it yourself: Whole Ecuadorian cacao beans, from the region where people first used cacao (raw cacao beans Ecuador on Amazon)

Sources: Zarrillo et al., "The Use and Domestication of Theobroma cacao during the Mid-Holocene in the Upper Amazon", Nature Ecology & Evolution 2 (2018), record at Kennesaw State; Smithsonian Magazine: Cacao Was First Cultivated in South America, Not Mexico and Central America; Science News: Ancient South Americans tasted chocolate 1,500 years before anyone else

Paso de la Amada and El Manatí: Mesoamerica's oldest cacao (1900-1500 BC) (1900-1500 BC)

Paso de la Amada was a Mokaya village in the Soconusco region of Chiapas, one of the earliest settled communities in Mesoamerica. In a 2007 study in Antiquity, Terry Powis, W. Jeffrey Hurst, Michael Coe and colleagues tested vessel fragments for theobromine, the chemical marker of cacao. One neckless jar from Paso de la Amada, dated 1900-1500 BC, tested positive, and so did a deep bowl from El Manatí, a ritual site in Veracruz in the Olmec heartland, dated 1650-1500 BC. The finds pushed back chemical evidence of cacao in Mesoamerica by about 700 years. The authors tied these fine vessels to feasting and prestige display.

How it began: Archaeologists coined the name Mokaya, meaning "corn people" in an early Mixe-Zoquean language. Their Barra-phase potters made some of Mesoamerica's earliest ceramics, including neckless jars called tecomates that were probably used for drinks such as cacao or atole rather than for cooking.

What became of it: Paso de la Amada grew to roughly 50 hectares in the Ocós phase. In the later Conchas phase, settlement in the region shifted toward the lower Río Naranjo.

• The cacao jar is a thin-walled, flat-bottomed tecomate with vertical fluting on the outside, found in construction fill in Mound 6.
• Only 2 of the 22 vessel fragments tested from the two sites contained theobromine.
• Theobromine works as a fingerprint because cacao is the only Mesoamerican plant in which it is the main stimulant compound.

Sources: Powis et al., "Oldest chocolate in the New World", Antiquity project gallery; Smithsonian Magazine: Cacao Was First Cultivated in South America (on the earlier 1900 BC evidence); Wikipedia: Mokaya

Colha's spouted chocolate jars (600 BC) (600 BC to AD 250)

Colha in northern Belize produced 14 spouted ceramic vessels from burials dating between 600 BC and AD 250. In 2002 W. Jeffrey Hurst, a chemist at the Hershey Foods Technical Center, and archaeologists from the University of Texas found theobromine in three of them. It was the first time the new mass-spectrometry method they used had been applied to dry residue from ancient pottery. The result pushed the chemical evidence of Maya chocolate back by about 1,000 years. The authors suggested the spout let a drinker froth the chocolate by blowing air into the jar, as well as pour it.

• Spouted jars like these were made only in the Preclassic period (900 BC to AD 250), are rare, and usually turn up in elite burials.
• Caffeine barely registered in the tests, because cocoa holds about ten times less caffeine than theobromine.
• Cacao-wood charcoal from the same period has been found at several sites in the area, which suggests northern Belize was a major cacao-growing region.

Try it yourself: Roasted cacao nibs: crushed beans, the raw stuff of the earliest Maya drink (organic cacao nibs on Amazon)

Sources: Hurst et al., "Cacao usage by the earliest Maya civilization", Nature 418 (2002); Antiquity project gallery: Oldest chocolate in the New World (on Colha, c. 600 BC); Wikipedia: History of chocolate

The Río Azul cacao pot (AD 460-480) (AD 460-480)

Río Azul is a Maya city in Guatemala's Petén, close to the Mexican and Belize borders. Tomb 19, found intact during Richard E. W. Adams's excavations in the 1980s, held Teotihuacan-style pottery from the Early Classic period, about AD 460-480. Some of its vessels held traces of cacao, one vessel is inscribed with hieroglyphs identifying it as a cacao pot, and the finds include a screw-top chocolate pot. Here a written label and a chemical test pointed to the same drink.

• Looters stripped many of Río Azul's elite tombs after the ruins were found in 1962; in the late 1970s as many as 80 workers were digging, paid by a wealthy private collector.
• In 2005 linguist Martha Macri argued that words painted on a Río Azul vessel are Nahua loanwords for a chocolate drink, evidence of Nahua influence in the Maya region as early as AD 480.
• The Colha jars from Belize showed Maya cacao use nearly a thousand years before the Río Azul tomb.

Sources: Hurst et al., Nature 418 (2002), citing the Río Azul residues; Macri, "Nahua Loan Words from the Early Classic Period: Words for Cacao Preparation on a Río Azul Ceramic Vessel", Ancient Mesoamerica (Cambridge); Wikipedia: Río Azul

Frothing by pouring: the Princeton Vase (AD 670-750) (AD 670-750)

For the Maya, and later the Aztecs, the foam was the best part of a chocolate drink. They raised it by pouring the liquid from one vessel into another. The Princeton Vase, a Late Classic drinking cup now in the Princeton University Art Museum, shows the act: in a mythological scene, a woman pours a stream of chocolate from a vessel shaped like the cup itself into a second vessel. Classic-period inscriptions and Spanish-era documents describe the same method.

How it was made: The Maya fermented and roasted cacao beans, ground them into a paste on a stone metate, mixed it with water, and poured the drink from one vessel to another to make it foam.

Where it is now: Under Spanish rule the pouring gave way to a wooden whisk, the molinillo, used to beat the drink to a froth inside the pot.

• The Princeton Vase (accession y1975-17) is a Maya uk'ib, or drinking cup, dated 670-750.
• Tall Maya cylinder beakers often carry a band of text on the rim that names what the cup was for.
• The Maya deity Ek Chuah was the patron god of cacao.

Try it yourself: Ceremonial cacao paste, made to be mixed with water and frothed into a thick drink (ceremonial cacao paste on Amazon)

Sources: Princeton University Art Museum: Uk'ib (drinking cup) depicting a mythological scene, y1975-17; Hurst et al., Nature 418 (2002), on frothing by pouring; World History Encyclopedia: Chocolate in Mesoamerica; Wikipedia: History of chocolate

Moctezuma II and the "fifty jugs" (about 1466-1520) (About 1466-1520)

Moctezuma II ruled the Mexica (Aztec) capital Tenochtitlan from 1502 until 1520. The best-known picture of his chocolate drinking comes from Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier with Cortés who later wrote his memoirs. Díaz says the ruler was handed a golden pitcher of cacao drink from time to time at dinner, and that he saw about fifty large pitchers of it brought in, all frothy. Díaz does not say Moctezuma drank fifty cups himself. The popular claim that he drank 50 cups a day appears to grow out of a retelling of this passage.

How they rose: Moctezuma became tlatoani (ruler) in 1502, after the death of his uncle Ahuitzotl. Cortés's men entered Tenochtitlan in November 1519, and within days Moctezuma was their hostage.

How they died: He died in June 1520 while held by the Spaniards. Accounts disagree on whether Spaniards or his own people killed him; one version says a stone struck him as he urged the crowd to calm down.

• Díaz says that after the ruler's meal his household officers were served frothing jugs of cacao, "certainly 2000 of them".
• A note in the English translation of Díaz explains that the drink was like chocolate but mixed with boiled maize dough and drunk cold.
• Díaz saw cacao sold in the great market alongside cotton and twisted thread.

Try it yourself: Stone-ground Mexican chocolate discs, a modern cousin of the frothy court drink (Taza Mexican chocolate discs on Amazon)

Sources: Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Memoirs of the Conquistador, trans. J. I. Lockhart, vol. 1 (Project Gutenberg); World History Encyclopedia: Montezuma, Last Ruler of the Aztecs; Wikipedia: Moctezuma II

Money that grew on trees: cacao beans as currency (Recorded by Spaniards 1519-1545)

Across Mesoamerica cacao beans worked as small change. Cortés told Charles V that cacao, sold ground, was used instead of money all over the country, and that anything in the markets could be bought with it. A price list recorded at Tlaxcala in 1545 sets one good turkey hen at 100 beans, a turkey egg at 3, and a ripe avocado or a large tomato at one bean each. Beans also reached the capital as tribute from subject peoples. The chocolate drink itself was mostly for the elite.

• Fakes were common: some beans were hollowed out and refilled with sand, and others were molded from amaranth dough, wax or avocado pits.
• Prices differ by source: one modern summary puts a rabbit at 30 beans and a turkey at 200.
• The 1844 translator of Bernal Díaz noted that, according to Humboldt, cacao beans were still the smallest coin in New Spain in his own day.

Try it yourself: A bag of whole cacao beans, the small change of Aztec markets (whole raw cacao beans on Amazon)

Sources: Letters of Cortes, trans. F. A. MacNutt (1908), vol. 1 (Internet Archive); Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Memoirs, trans. Lockhart, vol. 1 (Project Gutenberg); Cornell University Library, Chocolate: Food of the Gods: When Money Grew on Trees; World History Encyclopedia: Chocolate in Mesoamerica; Wikipedia: History of chocolate

Cacao in the Codex Mendoza tribute lists (about 1541) (About 1541)

The Codex Mendoza was made around 1541 under the viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, so that the Spanish crown could see how the Aztec empire had taxed its subjects. Artists and scribes trained at the Franciscan college at Tlatelolco drew the goods each province owed. Cacao sits among the high-value items. The Gulf-coast province of Tochtepec, for example, owed 200 loads of cacao a year, along with cloaks, gold, feathers and 16,000 rubber balls, and Cornell's exhibition reproduces the page showing 200 loads of cacao from Soconusco on the Pacific coast. Quantities are written in base 20: a flag means 20, a feather-like sign 400, and a bag 8,000.

• Samuel Purchas wrote in 1625 that French privateers seized the codex at sea; André Thevet, cosmographer to Henry II of France, wrote his name in it.
• The codex has been in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, since 1659, where it is catalogued as MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1.
• Distant provinces such as Tochtepec paid in valuable, light goods, often obtained from outside their own territory, while nearby provinces sent bulk staples.

Sources: Digital Bodleian: Bodleian Library MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1 (Codex Mendoza); University of Kentucky: Codex Mendoza, Folio 46 recto (Tochtepec); Cornell University Library: When Money Grew on Trees; Wikipedia: Codex Mendoza

Hernán Cortés and the king's cacao farm (about 1485-1547) (About 1485-1547)

Cortés landed in 1519 and, after war and a siege, took Tenochtitlan on 13 August 1521. His letters to Emperor Charles V show how the Spaniards first valued cacao. In his second letter he says he asked Moctezuma to set up a farm for the king in the province of Malinaltepeque. Within two months, he writes, maize and beans had been sown and 2,000 cacao plants set, a fruit esteemed so highly that it served as money everywhere. Popular histories say he brought chests of cacao beans back to Spain, but even they tell it as something he "is said" to have done.

How they rose: Cortés was born about 1485 in Medellín, Extremadura. He landed on the Yucatán Peninsula in 1519 and wrote a series of long letters to the king about the conquest.

How they died: He first returned to Spain in May 1528 with treasure and about 40 Aztecs. He died on 2 December 1547 at Castilleja de la Cuesta, near Seville, of dysentery and pleurisy.

• Cortés described cacao as a plant that "bears a fruit somewhat like almonds".
• The same farm had four houses and a pond stocked with 500 ducks, kept for their feathers.
• His 1908 English editor notes that a garbled drink name in the letters has been read by some commentators as pan y cacao, bread and cocoa.

Sources: Letters of Cortes, trans. F. A. MacNutt (1908), vol. 1, Second Letter (Internet Archive); Exploratorium Magazine: Chocolate, page 2; Wikipedia: Hernán Cortés

Columbus meets a cacao canoe (1502) (15 August 1502)

In August 1502, on Columbus's fourth voyage, his brother Bartholomew landed on Guanaja, an island off the coast of Honduras. A dugout canoe "as long as a galley" and eight feet wide came in, loaded with dyed cotton cloth, copper hatchets, flint-edged wooden swords and cacao beans. The Spaniards took it without a fight. Columbus's son Ferdinand, who was on the voyage, wrote that the beans served as money in New Spain and that when any fell, the captives stooped anxiously to pick them up. The beans made no impression in Spain at the time, and the encounter led nowhere.

• The canoe carried 25 men, with women, children and goods sheltered under a palm-leaf awning that Ferdinand compared to a Venetian gondola.
• Columbus gave the canoe back but kept one old man, named Giumbe, as a guide.
• For provisions the canoe carried roots and grain and a maize drink that Ferdinand compared to English beer.

Sources: Ferdinand Columbus's history of the Admiral, in Robert Kerr, A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. 3 (Project Gutenberg); Exploratorium Magazine: Chocolate, page 2; Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests, ch. 1 "Explorers" (Cambridge University Press); Wikipedia: History of chocolate

Maya nobles bring chocolate to Prince Philip (1544) (1544)

In 1544 Dominican friars brought a group of Q'eqchi' (Kekchi) Maya nobles from Guatemala to the court of Prince Philip, the future Philip II of Spain. Among their gifts was chocolate. Sophie and Michael Coe, in The True History of Chocolate, treat this visit as the first documented appearance of chocolate in Europe. Some popular accounts credit Bartolomé de las Casas with leading the delegation, shortly after his campaigning had won the New Laws of 1542 against the enslavement of Indigenous people; the Coes credit Dominican friars in general.

• Las Casas, who is often credited with bringing chocolate to Europe, is quoted as calling the drink "tasty and agreeable".
• According to the Coes, Prince Philip seemed more struck by his visitors' near-nakedness than by their gifts.
• Cacao as a trade good came later: the first official recorded shipment of beans to Europe dates from 1585, 41 years after the visit.

Sources: Kenneth Maxwell, "The Road to Kisses", New York Review of Books (1996), reviewing Coe and Coe, The True History of Chocolate; Dominicana: With Zeal and Chocolate; Wikipedia: History of chocolate

Thomas Gage, the friar who explained chocolate to England (about 1603-1656) (About 1603-1656)

Gage sailed for the Spanish Indies in 1625 as a Dominican friar and spent about twelve years in Mexico and Guatemala. His book The English-American (1648) gives a full chapter to chocolate and atole. Drawing partly on the Spanish physician Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, whom he names, he lists the ingredients (among them cacao, achiote, chiles, anise, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla), explains grinding them on a metate, and describes pressing the paste into tablets or boxes. He notes that poorer drinkers put in only cacao, achiote, maize, a few chiles and a little anise. He also argued that the drink would suit England as well as it did Spain, Italy and Flanders.

How they rose: Gage came from a Catholic family in Surrey and was taught by Jesuits at St Omer. He chose the Dominicans instead of the Jesuits, and his father disinherited him for it.

How they died: Back in England he publicly left the Catholic Church in 1642, and his testimony helped send several Catholic priests to execution. He sailed as chaplain on Cromwell's 1654-55 expedition to the Caribbean, which captured Jamaica, and died there in 1656, probably of dysentery.

• Dutch corsairs captured Gage on his way home in 1637, and he lost most of the wealth he had gathered.
• He describes setting chocolate tablets on paper, or on a plantain leaf as Indigenous cooks did, and bending the leaf so the hardened tablet drops off.
• The English-American was the first book by someone who was not a Habsburg subject to describe daily life in Spanish America, and it was reprinted many times.

Try it yourself: Ibarra's cinnamon-and-sugar chocolate tablets, dissolved and frothed much as Gage described (Ibarra Mexican chocolate tablets on Amazon)

Sources: Thomas Gage, The English-American, His Travail by Sea and Land (1648), Project Gutenberg; British Empire map room: Thomas Gage; Newberry Library: Death by Chocolate, a chapter in Thomas Gage's The English American; Wikipedia: Thomas Gage (priest)

Anne of Austria and the chocolate wedding story (1615) (1615 (story told in 1825))

Anne, a Spanish princess and daughter of Philip III, married Louis XIII of France in 1615. Food writers often credit her with bringing Spanish chocolate to the French court. The best-known version comes from Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste (1825), which says chocolate "crossed the mountains with Anne of Austria", and adds that Spanish monks and ambassadors helped spread it. No contemporary documents support the wedding story. What is documented is later: in 1659 Louis XIV created the post of royal chocolatier for David Chaillou.

• The Project Gutenberg English translation of Brillat-Savarin calls Anne a daughter of Philip II; a 1909 Walter Baker & Co. booklet quoting the same passage gives the correct Philip III.
• In the same chapter Brillat-Savarin notes that Spanish women in the New World had chocolate sent after them to church, to their bishops' displeasure.
• He also says that during the Regency chocolate was more widely drunk in France than coffee, because it counted as a food while coffee was a luxury.

Sources: Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825), Project Gutenberg; Walter Baker & Co., Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes (1909), Project Gutenberg; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: Hot Chocolate, I Love You So; Wikipedia: History of chocolate

The molinillo, chocolate's wooden whisk (Described in the 1620s-1630s)

The molinillo is a wooden whisk twirled in hot chocolate to beat it into a froth. Spanish colonists used it instead of the Mesoamerican method of pouring the drink from a height. Thomas Gage, an English friar who spent twelve years in Mexico and Guatemala, described the usual way: dissolve a tablet or two in very hot water, grind it with the "Molinet" until it rises to a foam, then fill the cup and sweeten it with sugar. When chocolate reached Europe, pots were made with a lid that held the stick.

How it was made: No record says who first carved one. By the time Gage arrived in the 1620s he found it in everyday use in Mexico, where tablets were dissolved and frothed in the cup.

Where it is now: In Europe the stick went inside the pot: chocolate pots got a removable lid knob so the settled drink could be stirred before pouring.

• The most common Mexican method, according to Gage, was to froth a tablet in hot water with the Molinet and then top the cup with hot atole, a maize drink.
• Gage repeated the idea that the word chocolate came partly from the "Choco, Choco" sound the water makes when stirred with the Molinet.
• A 1750-51 silver chocolate pot by Samuel Courtauld in the V&A is catalogued with its "knob of molinet".

Try it yourself: A hand-turned wooden molinillo for frothing hot chocolate the colonial way (wooden molinillo whisk on Amazon)

Sources: Thomas Gage, The English-American (1648), ch. on chocolate, Project Gutenberg; V&A: Chocolate pot, Samuel Courtauld, London 1750-51; Kenneth Maxwell, "The Road to Kisses", New York Review of Books (1996); Wikipedia: History of chocolate

London's first chocolate house, Bishopsgate (1657) (June 1657)

The notice ran in the Publick Advertiser for 16-22 June 1657. At a Frenchman's house in Queen's Head Alley, off Bishopsgate Street, chocolate could be had ready-made at any time, or "unmade at reasonable rates" to prepare at home. It is the earliest record of a chocolate house in London. By 1659, a diarist noted, coffee, chocolate and tea were sold in almost every street, and Samuel Pepys was soon taking his morning draft in chocolate.

How it began: The advertisement names no owner, only "a Frenchman's house". An editor's note in Pepys's diary says chocolate had reached England about 1652.

What became of it: Nothing is known of how long the Bishopsgate house lasted. The idea outlived it: White's began in 1693 as Mrs White's Chocolate House, founded by the Italian Francesco Bianco, became an exclusive club, and has been in St James's Street since 1778.

• On 24 April 1661, nursing a sore head from the night before, Pepys drank chocolate with Mr Creed "to settle my stomach".
• On 24 November 1664 Pepys went to a coffee-house "to drink jocolatte, very good".
• From 1660 a duty of 8d a gallon was charged on chocolate, as on tea and sherbet.

Try it yourself: Shaved drinking chocolate for a proper cup of hot chocolate made with water or milk (drinking chocolate flakes on Amazon)

Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, with Wheatley's notes quoting the 1657 Publick Advertiser (Project Gutenberg); Londonist: Five moments from London's chocolate-drinking history; Wikipedia: White's

Sir Hans Sloane and chocolate with milk (1660-1753) (1660-1753)

Sloane sailed to Jamaica in 1687 as physician to the new governor, the Duke of Albemarle, and stayed about fifteen months. He found Jamaicans making a bitter drink from cacao, and he took it boiled with sugared milk. Back in London his name became a brand: by the 1750s a Soho grocer was selling "Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate" as a medicinal drink, and an 18th-century advertisement pitched it for consumption (tuberculosis). The historian James Delbourgo argues that Jamaicans were already brewing cacao with milk, so Sloane probably learned the habit rather than invented it.

How they rose: Sloane was born on 16 April 1660 in Killyleagh, in Ulster, and trained as a physician. In Jamaica he collected over 1,000 plant specimens, the basis for his later books on the island.

How they died: He died in Chelsea on 11 January 1753, aged 92. He left about 71,000 objects to the nation for £20,000, and they became the founding collections of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum.

• His wife was heiress to Jamaican sugar plantations worked by enslaved people, and Sloane invested in the Royal African and South Sea Companies, both of which traded enslaved people.
• Cadbury later invoked Sloane's recipe in its advertising.
• The Duke of Albemarle died in Jamaica in 1688, which cut Sloane's stay on the island to about fifteen months.

Try it yourself: Cadbury drinking chocolate, from the firm that later used Sloane's name in its ads (Cadbury Drinking Chocolate on Amazon)

Sources: Wellcome Collection: Advertisement for Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate (18th century); National Library of Jamaica: Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753); Wikipedia: Hans Sloane

Does chocolate break the fast? (1600s) (Late 1500s to 1700s; Brancaccio's essay 1664)

Church fasting rules barred food but allowed drink, so the question was whether chocolate counted as food. For well over a century theologians argued it out. Popes Pius V, Clement VII and Benedict XIV are reported to have ruled that it did not break the fast, yet the dispute went on. In 1664 Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio published De Chocolatis Potu Diatribe, concluding that drinking chocolate did not break the fast, a view the Jesuits supported. Brillat-Savarin later said the Jesuit Escobar declared chocolate made with water did not break a fast, citing the old saying Liquidum non frangit jejunium: liquid does not break the fast.

• Thomas Gage reported that women in Chiapa had their maids bring them chocolate during Mass, and that swords were drawn in the cathedral when the bishop, who had banned eating and drinking in church on pain of excommunication, had clergy take the cups away.
• When the bishop died soon after, Gage passed on gossip that a cup of chocolate had poisoned him, and the saying "Beware of the Chocolatte of Chiapa". A Newberry Library scholar names the bishop as Bernardino de Salazar and notes the story may be exaggerated.
• Brancaccio's essay ends with a Latin ode to the chocolate tree by a Jesuit, Aloysius Ferronius.

Sources: Thomas Gage, The English-American (1648), Project Gutenberg; Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825), Project Gutenberg; Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi: A Seventeenth-Century Latin Ode to the Chocolate Tree; Newberry Library: Death by Chocolate, a chapter in Thomas Gage's The English American; Wikipedia: History of chocolate

Joseph Fry of Bristol (1728-1787) (1728-1787)

Joseph Fry built a busy medical practice in Bristol before turning to business. He was making chocolate by about the age of 30. In 1761 he and John Vaughan bought Walter Churchman's chocolate business, whose water engine, patented by Churchman, powered the grinding, and renamed it Fry, Vaughan and Co. Their first surviving advertisement, dated December 1761, was headed "Churchman's Patent-Chocolate". The business first ran from Fry's apothecary shop in Small Street, Bristol.

How they rose: Fry was born in 1728, the eldest son of John Fry of Sutton Benger, Wiltshire. He trained under a Basingstoke doctor, Henry Portsmouth, and married his daughter, Anna.

How they died: He died in Bristol in March 1787 after a few days' illness. Anna and their son Joseph Storrs Fry ran the business as Anna Fry & Son, and Joseph Storrs Fry took control in 1795.

• Chocolate was only one of Fry's trades: inspired by John Baskerville, he also set up a type foundry in 1764 and had a soap works and a chemical works.
• His type foundry moved to London and later called itself letter-founders to the Prince of Wales.
• Writing in 1889, the Dictionary of National Biography noted that his chocolate and cocoa works was still run by the family.

Try it yourself: Fry's Chocolate Cream, a bar still sold under the name of the Bristol firm (Fry's Chocolate Cream bar on Amazon)

Sources: Dictionary of National Biography (1889): Fry, Joseph (1728-1787), Wikisource; Nell Darby, "The Great British Chocolate Factory", Discover Your Ancestors (2016); Wikipedia: Joseph Fry (type-founder)

The chocolate pot and its stirring hole (1600s-1700s; V&A pot 1750-51)

Once chocolate reached European tables, silversmiths and potters made special pots for it. They shared the shape of coffee pots, but the finial on the lid could be removed, so a stirring stick could go in: chocolate settles, and had to be stirred before pouring. In the Spanish world that stick was the molinillo, and the chocolate pot's lid was made to hold it. Samuel Courtauld's silver pot, assayed in London in 1750-51 and lent to the V&A by the Gilbert Collection, is catalogued with its "knob of molinet". At the top end, Marie Antoinette owned a silver chocolate service by Jean-Pierre Charpenat with more than a hundred pieces.

How it was made: The pot grew out of the frothing habit: Europeans swapped pouring from a height for a stick turned inside a lidded pot.

Where it is now: Courtauld's pot, on loan to the V&A from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection, is a pear-shaped Rococo piece covered with shells, scrolls, foliage and marine scale-work.

• The V&A says chocolate pots can be told from coffee pots by their removable finial.
• The bird-shaped spout on Courtauld's pot matches one on a William Cripps coffee pot, which suggests a specialist made spouts for several goldsmiths.
• A peacock is hidden in the pot's decoration.

Try it yourself: A Spanish-style chocolatera with a wooden molinillo, for frothing chocolate in the pot (chocolatera pot with molinillo on Amazon)

Sources: V&A: Chocolate pot, Samuel Courtauld, London 1750-51; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: Hot Chocolate, I Love You So; Kenneth Maxwell, "The Road to Kisses", New York Review of Books (1996)

Baker's Chocolate, Dorchester (1765) (1765)

Dr James Baker, a Dorchester physician and shopkeeper, met John Hannon, an Irish immigrant who knew how to make chocolate, in 1764. The next spring Baker took over a sawmill on the Neponset River, and Hannon ground cocoa beans between two millstones turned by the river, then poured the chocolate into molds. Thomas Jefferson, writing to John Adams in 1785, complained it was hard to get fresh in America and predicted it would one day be preferred to tea and coffee, as it was in Spain.

How it was made: According to the 1980 National Register nomination, Hannon had learned the trade in England, though a local history notes that no one knows for sure. In 1779 he sailed for the West Indies to buy beans and never came back, and Baker took the business over; sources differ on whether he gained full control about 1774 or in 1780.

Where it is now: The firm grew under Baker's grandson Walter Baker, who died in 1852. General Foods owned it from 1927 and in 1965 decided to move production from Dorchester to Dover, Delaware. The brand now belongs to Kraft Heinz. The surviving mill buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in April 1980.

• Accounts differ on what happened to Hannon: some say he died in a shipwreck, others that he simply left a troubled marriage.
• German's chocolate cake is named after Samuel German, a Baker employee who created a sweeter chocolate in 1852, not after Germany.
• Jefferson's fix for the price problem was trade policy: let chocolate come "immediately from the country of it's growth".

Try it yourself: Baker's unsweetened chocolate, the brand that began on the Neponset River in 1765 (Baker's unsweetened baking chocolate bar on Amazon)

Sources: National Park Service: Dorchester-Milton Lower Mills Industrial District, National Register nomination (1980); Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 27 November 1785, Monticello (Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters); Dorchester Reporter: Lower Mills Was Once Center of Chocolate Universe; Dorchester Atheneum: Dorchester/Milton Lower Mills Industrial District; Wikipedia: Baker's Chocolate

John Cadbury opens his Bull Street shop (1824) (1824 (shop opened); 1801–1889)

John Cadbury opened his shop at 93 Bull Street, Birmingham, in 1824, next door to his father's drapery. He sold tea, coffee, hops and mustard alongside cocoa and drinking chocolate that he prepared himself. A teetotaller and temperance campaigner, he saw drinking chocolate as an alternative to alcohol. The shop grew into a factory, and the factory into one of the best-known chocolate companies in the world.

How they rose: Born in Birmingham on 12 August 1801 into a well-off Quaker family, he opened the shop beside his father's drapery. He soon moved from retail into manufacturing cocoa and drinking chocolate for customers beyond the city.

How they died: Severe arthritis forced him to retire in 1861, when his sons Richard and George took over a business that was then losing money. He died at his home in Edgbaston on 11 May 1889, aged 87, and is buried at Witton Cemetery.

• Besides chocolate, the 1824 shop sold hops and mustard: a Quaker grocer's stock, not a sweet shop.
• As a Poor Law guardian between 1830 and 1841, Cadbury campaigned against the use of 'climbing boys', children sent up chimneys to sweep them.
• His sons' first big success was 'Cocoa Essence', which Arthur Knapp's 1920 history dates to 1866: a purer cocoa made by pressing out some of the fat.

Try it yourself: Cadbury drinking chocolate, the drink John Cadbury sold from his shop (Cadbury drinking chocolate tin on Amazon)

Sources: Wellcome Collection: 'Cadbury's Cocoa: absolutely pure' advertising card (1890s); A. W. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate: Their History from Plantation to Consumer (1920), Project Gutenberg; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting: Famous Quaker John Cadbury; Grace's Guide: Cadbury Brothers; Wikipedia: Cadbury; Wikipedia: John Cadbury

Van Houten's cocoa press (1828) (1828)

Ground cacao nibs are a little over half fat, which made old-style drinking chocolate heavy and greasy. In 1828 the Van Houten family of Amsterdam patented a hydraulic press that removed roughly half of that cocoa butter, leaving a dry cake that could be ground into powder. The family later treated the powder with alkaline salts, so it mixed more easily with water and turned darker and milder; this is the 'Dutch process' still used today. The press also freed up cocoa butter, the ingredient that would make solid eating chocolate possible.

How it was made: Casparus van Houten Sr. had opened a chocolate factory in Amsterdam in 1815. The 1828 patent stood in his name, although the invention is usually credited to his son Coenraad Johannes (1801–1887), who is credited with the alkalizing method.

Where it is now: The patent expired in 1838 and other makers began pressing cocoa. The firm moved to a steam factory in Weesp in 1850, was sold to W. R. Grace in 1962, and the Weesp factories closed in 1971; the Van Houten name lives on as a brand.

• Knapp's 1920 manual says nibs held 54 to 55 per cent fat, while the pressed cake kept only 25 to 30 per cent; the press ram often pushed at 6,000 pounds per square inch.
• Van Houten moved production from a Leiden windmill to a steam-powered factory in Weesp in 1850.
• Probably in the 1890s the firm advertised its cocoa with cards featuring Dickens characters such as Mr Micawber and Captain Cuttle.

Try it yourself: Droste cocoa, a Dutch-process powder made the way Van Houten's was (Droste Dutch process cocoa powder on Amazon)

Sources: V&A: Willette, 'Prenez du cacao Van Houten', colour lithograph poster (1893); Wellcome Collection: Van Houten's Cocoa advertising card, Captain Cuttle (1890s); A. W. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate (1920), Project Gutenberg; Grace's Guide: Van Houtens Chocolate; Wikipedia: Coenraad Johannes van Houten

Fry's moulded eating chocolate (1847) (1847)

For most of its European history chocolate was a drink. In 1847 J. S. Fry & Sons of Bristol made a paste of cocoa powder, sugar and melted cocoa butter that could be pressed into a mould and eaten. It was sold as 'Chocolat Délicieux à Manger' and is often called the first chocolate bar of its kind. It may have been the first chocolate made with added cocoa butter; Fry's did not install a Van Houten-type cocoa press until 1868.

How it was made: Joseph Fry, a Quaker, began making chocolate around 1759 and in 1761 bought a Bristol shop and its refining patent. In 1795 his son Joseph Storrs Fry patented a method of grinding cocoa with a Watt steam engine.

Where it is now: Fry's merged with Cadbury in 1919 and moved production to Somerdale, near Keynsham, from 1923. Kraft closed the Somerdale factory in 2011, but Fry's Chocolate Cream is still sold.

• Fry's Chocolate Cream, launched in 1866, is described as probably the first mass-produced chocolate candy bar.
• Grace's Guide credits Fry's with the first chocolate Easter egg made in Britain, in 1873.
• Fry's, Cadbury and Rowntree's, the three great British chocolate firms, were all founded by Quakers.

Try it yourself: Fry's Chocolate Cream, the 1866 bar that is still made (Fry's Chocolate Cream bar on Amazon)

Sources: A. W. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate (1920), Project Gutenberg; Hackney Museum: Tin of Fry's half pound cocoa (object 1987.209); Grace's Guide: J. S. Fry and Sons; Wikipedia: J. S. Fry & Sons

Domingo Ghirardelli in San Francisco (1852) (1852 (business reopened); 1817–1894)

Domenico 'Domingo' Ghirardelli trained as a confectioner in Italy, traded coffee and chocolate in Peru, and reached California in 1849 to sell supplies and sweets to gold miners. After a fire in 1851 destroyed his San Francisco business he started again in 1852. His company outlived him, and its brick factory on the waterfront became Ghirardelli Square. It is described as the third-oldest chocolate company in the United States.

How they rose: Born in Rapallo in 1817, he went to Uruguay at about 20 and then round Cape Horn to Lima. His Lima neighbour James Lick took 600 pounds of Ghirardelli's chocolate to San Francisco around 1847-48 (sources differ on the year), and Ghirardelli followed in 1849.

How they died: The company bought the Pioneer Woolen Mill on North Point Street in 1893, and Domingo died in Italy a year later. Lindt & Sprüngli bought the company in 1998; the old factory opened as Ghirardelli Square on 29 November 1964.

• The Ghirardelli buildings came through the 1906 earthquake undamaged, with only a few days' interruption to business.
• The square's clock tower was modelled on the Château de Blois in France.
• An 1899 Ghirardelli advertisement in the San Francisco Call warned shoppers against grocers who offered its chocolate and cocoa 'as a BAIT at cut prices' and then pushed more profitable Eastern brands.

Try it yourself: Ghirardelli squares, from the Gold Rush firm now owned by Lindt (Ghirardelli chocolate squares assortment on Amazon)

Sources: The San Francisco Call, 30 April 1899, p. 15: D. Ghirardelli Co. advertisement (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); San Francisco Landmark #30: Ghirardelli Square (NoeHill); Fisherman's Wharf CBD: Domenico 'Domingo' Ghirardelli; Wikipedia: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

Daniel Peter makes milk chocolate (1875) (1875; 1836–1919)

Milk is mostly water, and water ruins chocolate. Daniel Peter, a chocolate maker in Vevey on Lake Geneva, worked for years on the problem before succeeding in 1875 with condensed milk supplied by his neighbour Henri Nestlé. His milk chocolate became the basis of Switzerland's greatest chocolate export. Arthur Knapp, writing in 1920, credited 'M. D. Peter of Vevey' with the introduction of milk chocolate, though he dated it to 1876.

How they rose: Born in Moudon in 1836, Peter founded a candle-making business in Vevey in 1856. Kerosene lamps cut into candle sales, so he turned to chocolate, founding his own chocolate firm in 1867; he had married Fanny-Louise Cailler, daughter of the chocolatier François-Louis Cailler, in 1863.

How they died: Peter merged his firm with Kohler in 1904 and died in Vevey on 4 November 1919. Nestlé bought the Peter, Cailler and Kohler brands in 1929.

• Peter first tried Nestlé's powdered milk, but it led to mildew; condensed milk worked.
• Knapp recalled in 1920 that many British readers first tasted Peter's milk chocolate in the 1890s.
• Peter's milk chocolate brand of 1887 was called Gala Peter, from the Greek word 'gala', meaning milk.

Try it yourself: Cailler, the Vevey-area brand of Peter's father-in-law, now made by Nestlé (Cailler Swiss milk chocolate bar on Amazon)

Sources: A. W. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate (1920), Project Gutenberg; SWI swissinfo.ch: The pioneers of Switzerland's 'Chocolate Revolution' (2017); Wikipedia: Daniel Peter

Bournville, Cadbury's factory village (1879) (1879 (factory); 1900 (village trust))

In 1879 the brothers George and Richard Cadbury moved their chocolate works out of central Birmingham to a rural site about four miles south. They named it Bournville, after the Bourn stream plus 'ville', French for town. From 1893 George Cadbury bought land around the works and began a model village, with houses covering no more than a quarter of their plots. In 1900 he handed it to the Bournville Village Trust.

How it began: The Cadburys wanted cleaner air and room to grow. George Cadbury, a temperance Quaker, believed factory workers needed fresh air and gardens; building of the model village began in 1895.

What became of it: The Bournville Village Trust still runs the estate and must reinvest its income in the estate and in housing reform, and the Cadbury World visitor attraction is now established there.

• W. A. Harvey's 1906 account says each cottage had on average 600 square yards of garden and that there was 'not a single licensed-house in the village'.
• Alcohol may still not be sold within the historic estate; a members' bar at Rowheath Pavilion has been the exception since the late 1940s.
• Grace's Guide records about 10,000 people working at Bournville alone by 1938.

Try it yourself: Cadbury Bournville, the dark bar named after the factory village (Cadbury Bournville dark chocolate bar on Amazon)

Sources: W. Alexander Harvey, The Model Village and Its Cottages: Bournville (1906), Project Gutenberg; Birmingham Civic Society: Blue Plaque, Bournville Building Estate; Grace's Guide: Cadbury Brothers; Wikipedia: Bournville

Rodolphe Lindt's conche (1879) (December 1879)

Early eating chocolate was gritty and often bitter. In December 1879 Rodolphe Lindt developed the conche, a machine that kept liquid chocolate moving back and forth for long periods. The long stirring smoothed the texture and let unwanted sour aromas evaporate. Conching is still a standard step in fine chocolate making; Knapp's 1920 manual says it could run from a few hours to a week.

How it was made: Lindt, born in Bern on 16 July 1855, apprenticed with Kohler in Lausanne from 1873 to 1875. He opened his own small factory in Bern's Matte quarter in 1879, the same year he built the conche.

Where it is now: In 1899 he sold his factory and the conching secret to Rudolf Sprüngli of Zurich for 1.5 million gold francs, creating Lindt & Sprüngli. He stayed involved in the Bern works until 1905 and died on 20 February 1909.

• Lindt was among the first to add extra cocoa butter back into the chocolate mass, which helped it melt smoothly.
• The machine was named for its shell-shaped tank, in which grinding added friction and heat.
• Lindt & Sprüngli, the company built on his process, bought San Francisco's Ghirardelli in 1998.

Try it yourself: Lindt Excellence, a conched bar from the company Lindt's process built (Lindt Excellence 70% cocoa dark chocolate bar on Amazon)

Sources: A. W. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate (1920), Project Gutenberg; SWI swissinfo.ch: The pioneers of Switzerland's 'Chocolate Revolution' (2017); Candy Hall of Fame: Rodolphe Lindt; Wikipedia: Rodolphe Lindt

Tetteh Quarshie plants cacao in the Gold Coast (1879) (1879; c. 1842–1892)

Tetteh Quarshie worked on the Spanish island of Fernando Po (now Bioko), where he saw cacao grown. He brought beans home and in 1879 planted them at Akuapem-Mampong. Friends and relatives bought his pods and seedlings, and cacao spread across the region. Knapp's 1920 manual records the first bag exported from the Gold Coast in 1891, weighing 80 pounds; other sources give first-export dates from 1885 to 1893.

How they rose: Born about 1842 to a Ga-Dangme family, he was trained as a blacksmith in a Basel Mission workshop at Akropong. He went to Fernando Po around 1870; sources disagree on whether he came back in 1876 or as late as 1879.

How they died: He died on 25 December 1892, too early to see the cocoa boom. After independence, Kwame Nkrumah's government named the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital at Mampong after him.

• Knapp reported that by 1915, only 24 years after that first 80-pound bag, the Gold Coast exported 120 million pounds of cacao.
• His claim was disputed by the son of Governor William Brandford Griffith, who had set up cacao nurseries; Governor Guggisberg investigated in the 1920s and ruled for Tetteh Quarshie.
• His first harvest came around 1883, when he began selling pods to other farmers.

Try it yourself: A single-origin bar made from Ghanaian cacao (single origin Ghana dark chocolate bar on Amazon)

Sources: A. W. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate (1920), Project Gutenberg; Ghana-Net: Tetteh Quarshie, The Blacksmith Who Brought Cocoa to Ghana; Wikipedia: Tetteh Quarshie

Milton Hershey's nickel milk chocolate bar (1900) (1900; 1857–1945)

Milton Hershey, raised in a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania, became interested in chocolate at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He sold his Lancaster Caramel Company for $1 million in 1900 and introduced Hershey's milk chocolate the same year after years of trial and error. The Hershey Community Archives say he was the first to make milk chocolate by mass production with fresh milk. He built a company town, Hershey, Pennsylvania, around the factory.

How they rose: He had little schooling, trained as a confectioner and worked in several cities, then made his fortune with caramels in Lancaster, where the firm employed over 1,300 people.

How they died: In 1918 he transferred most of his assets to a trust that supports the Hershey Industrial School for orphan boys, founded in 1909 and now the Milton Hershey School. He died of pneumonia on 13 October 1945, aged 88; a newspaper the next day called him the 'Famous Chocolate King'.

• The standard Hershey bar cost a nickel from 1900 until 24 November 1969, though the company changed the bar's weight as cocoa prices rose and fell.
• Hershey switched its wrapper lettering from gold to silver ink after another confectionery company complained of trademark infringement; silver was used from 1906 to 1911.
• Hershey had a booking on the Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912 and cancelled it because of business.

Try it yourself: The Hershey's milk chocolate bar, made since 1900 (Hershey's milk chocolate bars on Amazon)

Sources: The Wilmington Morning Star, 14 October 1945, p. 8: Hershey obituary (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); Hershey Community Archives: Hershey's Milk Chocolate, Bar Wrappers Over the Years; Wikipedia: Milton S. Hershey

Cadbury Dairy Milk (1905) (June 1905)

George Cadbury Jr. developed a milk chocolate bar with a higher proportion of milk than earlier Cadbury bars, and it went on sale in June 1905. It is described as the first time a British company could mass-produce milk chocolate. Dairy Milk was the firm's best-selling product by 1914 and was still the UK's best-selling chocolate bar a century later.

How it was made: During development it was called 'Highland Milk', 'Jersey' and 'Dairy Maid'. Cadbury says a customer's daughter suggested the name Dairy Milk.

Where it is now: It is still made, now by Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury after Kraft's 2010 takeover.

• The 'glass and a half' of milk symbol first appeared in press and poster advertising in 1928.
• At its 1905 launch the wrapper was pale mauve with red script, not the purple used today.
• Cadbury won a UK trademark case over its shade of purple in 2012, but Nestlé won on appeal in October 2013.

Try it yourself: Cadbury Dairy Milk, the 1905 bar still sold today (Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar UK on Amazon)

Sources: V&A: Anonymous pictorial advertisement for Cadbury's milk chocolate, colour lithograph (1890–1910); Cadbury South Africa: The Cadbury Story; Wikipedia: Cadbury Dairy Milk; Wikipedia: Cadbury

Hershey's Kisses (1907) (1907)

Milton Hershey introduced Kisses in 1907: small flat-bottomed drops of milk chocolate wrapped in foil. Nobody knows for sure where the name came from: one theory points to the sound of the machines, another to 'kiss' as an old word for a small sweet. Early Kisses were wrapped by hand, with a square of tissue inside the foil to show they were Hershey's. Copycats were a problem, because buyers only saw the tissue after unwrapping.

How it was made: Machines extruded the chocolate at a set temperature and amount. In August 1921 wrapping machines began adding the printed paper 'plume' that names the maker on every piece.

Where it is now: Production stopped during the Second World War because foil was rationed. Production resumed in 1949, and more than 70 million Kisses are now made each day.

• Hershey registered the cone-shaped wrapper with its plume as a U.S. trademark in 1924.
• The Patent and Trademark Office refused to register the word 'Kisses' as generic; a survey in which about 79% of candy buyers called it a brand helped Hershey win the mark in 2001.
• A 1923 San Antonio Light grocery advertisement offered '60c Hershey Kisses' at 49 cents a pound.

Try it yourself: Hershey's Kisses, foil and plume as in 1921 (Hershey's Kisses milk chocolate bag on Amazon)

Sources: San Antonio Light, 2 March 1923, p. 14: grocery advertisement (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); Hershey Community Archives: A History of Hershey's Kisses; Mental Floss: How Hershey Trademarked the Word 'Kisses' (2015); Wikipedia: Hershey's Kisses

Toblerone (1908) (1908)

In 1908 Emil Baumann developed a milk chocolate with nougat, almonds and honey, and his cousin Theodor Tobler designed the triangular bar and its packaging. Tobler filed a Swiss patent on 29 March 1909 for 'a procedure to produce a new kind of chocolate' and registered the brand in Bern the same year. The shape is usually linked to the Matterhorn, but no company document records where it came from.

How it was made: Theodor's father Jean Tobler had opened a confectionery shop in Bern in 1867 and the family opened its own chocolate factory there in 1899. The Montélimar nougat Baumann brought back from France is said to have started the experiments.

Where it is now: Tobler merged with Suchard in 1970, and Toblerone now belongs to Mondelēz International. After some production moved to Bratislava, Swiss labelling rules led to the logo being redrawn to look less like the Matterhorn.

• Tobler's sons said the shape came not from a mountain but from a human pyramid of dancers at the Folies Bergère in Paris.
• In 2016 UK bars lost two peaks and about 10% of their weight; the old shape returned in 2018.
• A 1922 Washington Evening Star advertisement offered 'TOBLERONE (Swiss Chocolate with Honey and Almonds)' and said Tobler's chocolates were something more than 'Just Chocolate'.

Try it yourself: Toblerone, the 1908 honey-and-almond nougat bar (Toblerone Swiss milk chocolate honey almond nougat on Amazon)

Sources: Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 14 April 1922, p. 3: Toblerone advertisement (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); SWI swissinfo.ch: The pioneers of Switzerland's 'Chocolate Revolution' (2017); Museum of Brands (brandhome): Toblerone logo history; Wikipedia: Toblerone

São Tomé slave labour and the Cadbury libel trial (1909) (1909 (libel trial); scandal 1901–1909)

In 1901 William Cadbury learned that a São Tomé plantation for sale listed two hundred Black labourers among its assets, valued at £3,555; at the time the firm bought 45% of its cocoa beans from São Tomé and Príncipe. The journalist Henry Nevinson travelled through Angola and the islands and in 1906 published A Modern Slavery, describing people bought in Angola, declared 'contract labourers', and shipped to the cocoa estates. Cadbury and the other Quaker firms spent years on investigations and lobbying, and only announced a boycott on 19 March 1909. When The Standard accused Cadbury of hypocrisy in September 1908, the company sued for libel; in late 1909 the jury found the paper had libelled the firm but awarded just one farthing in damages.

• Nevinson estimated about 30,000 enslaved labourers on São Tomé and another 3,000 on Príncipe, with a death rate of about 20% a year.
• The Barrow Cadbury Trust's own history says that by the end of 1909 Portugal publicly outlawed the trade and 14,000 people were repatriated to Angola, though coerced labour continued until independence in 1975.
• Writing in 1920, Arthur Knapp put it more mildly: before 1908 the islands' labour system 'was responsible for grave abuses'.

Sources: Henry W. Nevinson, A Modern Slavery (1906), Project Gutenberg; A. W. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate (1920), Project Gutenberg; Barrow Cadbury Trust: Background paper on the origins of the BCT endowment and the São Tomé and Príncipe slave trade (PDF); Selly Manor Museum: Cadbury Brothers and the issue of contract labour (2020)

The Belgian praline (1912) (1912)

In Belgium a 'praline' is a chocolate with a filling, not the French nut sweet. The Neuhaus firm says Jean Neuhaus Jr. created the first ones in 1912 at the family shop in the Galerie de la Reine in Brussels. His wife Louise Agostini then designed the ballotin, a gift box that stopped pralines being crushed in paper cones. Both the filled bonbon and the box became the standard way Belgian chocolates are sold.

How it was made: The Swiss-born Jean Neuhaus opened a 'confiserie pharmaceutique' in the Galerie de la Reine in 1857, selling cough sweets, marshmallow and liquorice, and coating some remedies in chocolate. His grandson Jean Jr. (1877–1953) turned the coating into the point.

Where it is now: Neuhaus still has its shop in the Galerie de la Reine and makes its chocolates at Vlezenbeek, near Brussels; it is owned by Compagnie du Bois Sauvage.

• The 1912 date and the 'first praline' claim come mainly from Neuhaus's own history; La Libre repeated it in 2023.
• The ballotin dates to 1915, according to the company.
• The Galerie de la Reine is part of the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries, a covered arcade opened in 1847.

Try it yourself: A Neuhaus ballotin of pralines, both credited to the Brussels shop (Neuhaus Belgian chocolate pralines ballotin on Amazon)

Sources: Neuhaus: Our Story (the company's own account); La Libre Belgique: Et Neuhaus inventa la praline dans la Galerie de la Reine (2023); Focus on Belgium: Jean Neuhaus Junior, the inventor of Belgian pralines; Wikipedia: Neuhaus (chocolatier)

The Milky Way bar (1923) (1923)

Frank C. Mars was making the Mar-O-Bar in Minneapolis when he and his son Forrest talked about putting the taste of a chocolate malted milk drink into a bar. The result, launched in 1923, was malt-flavoured nougat topped with caramel and coated in milk chocolate. It was named after the malted milk drink, not the galaxy. It was the first chocolate bar from the company that became Mars Inc.

How it was made: Mars, who had learned to hand-dip chocolates as a boy recovering from polio, moved to Minneapolis in 1920. The Milky Way's size helped it: Forrest recalled that it looked bigger than a Hershey bar at the same price.

Where it is now: The bar made Mars a national company; Frank moved the business to the Chicago area by 1929 and died in 1934. The Milky Way is still made, and Mars Inc. is one of the world's largest confectioners.

• The Milky Way brought in nearly $800,000 in sales in its first year; Wikipedia gives that figure for 1924, when it went national.
• The Milky Way sold outside North America, introduced in England in 1935 by Forrest Mars's company, has no caramel and is light enough to float in milk.
• By 1927 an Indiana newspaper listed Milky Way alongside Baby Ruth and Bit-O-Honey among 'well known candy bars'.

Try it yourself: The Milky Way bar, malt nougat and caramel since 1923 (Milky Way candy bar on Amazon)

Sources: South Bend News-Times, 29 April 1927, p. 10 (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); Minnesota Monthly: Candy Bar Combat, by Jack El-Hai (2007); FOX 9: The Milky Way, how Frank Mars started a candy bar empire in Minnesota (2022); Wikipedia: Milky Way (chocolate bar)

Hershey's Ration D bar (1937) (1937–1945)

In spring 1937 Captain Paul Logan of the Army Quartermaster General's office met Hershey's president William Murrie and chief chemist Sam Hinkle. He wanted a four-ounce emergency bar that was high in energy, would not melt in heat, and tasted 'a little better than a boiled potato'. The result, Field Ration D, was a dense mix of chocolate, sugar, skim milk powder, cocoa fat and oat flour of about 600 calories. The paste was too thick to pour, so at first each bar was weighed, kneaded and pressed into its mould by hand.

How it was made: The first order was 90,000 bars, which took about three weeks to make. By 1939 Hershey was making 100,000 units a day.

Where it is now: By the end of the war Hershey was producing about 24 million ration bars a week, and over three billion were made between 1940 and 1945. The Tropical Bar of 1943, only slightly better-tasting, gradually replaced the D ration by 1945.

• Soldiers nicknamed it 'Hitler's secret weapon' for what it did to their digestion.
• Eating instructions told troops to take about half an hour over a bar.
• A 1942 Washington Evening Star feature said the Quartermaster's 'Field Ration D' did 'the impossible': it withstood melting in the most sizzling heat.

Sources: Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 13 September 1942, image 140 (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); Hershey Community Archives: Serving the Nation, Hershey and the Ration D Bar (2015); HistoryNet: The US Army Chocolate Bar That GIs Dubbed 'Hitler's Secret Weapon'; Wikipedia: Military chocolate (D ration)

The Toll House chocolate chip cookie (1938) (1938)

Ruth Graves Wakefield ran the kitchen at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. While working on a butterscotch pecan cookie she added chopped semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate, and the pieces held their shape in the oven. The recipe appeared in the 1938 edition of her cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes, as 'Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies'. The popular story that the chocolate went in by accident is a legend; Wakefield herself said she invented the cookie on purpose. Some accounts, including State Symbols USA, date it to 1930, the year the Wakefields bought the inn, but the recipe first appeared in print in 1938.

How it was made: Wakefield, a former high-school home economics teacher, bought the inn with her husband Kenneth in 1930. The building was said to have been a toll house as early as 1709, and her cooking grew the dining room from seven tables to about sixty.

Where it is now: She let Nestlé print the recipe on its packaging for a $1 payment and a lifetime supply of chocolate; Nestlé began selling small chocolate pieces called 'morsels' in 1940. She retired in 1966 and died in 1977, and the Toll House Inn burned down in 1984.

• The cookies became popular during the Second World War, when the Wakefields received requests to send them to troops from other states.
• Massachusetts law states: 'The chocolate chip cookie shall be the official cookie of the commonwealth.'
• The designation, made in 1997, was proposed by a third-grade class from Somerset; Governor William Weld had suggested the Fig Newton instead.

Try it yourself: Nestlé Toll House morsels, with Wakefield's recipe on the bag (Nestle Toll House semi-sweet morsels on Amazon)

Sources: Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 2, Section 42: Cookie of commonwealth; Carolyn Wyman, The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book (2014), Internet Archive; State Symbols USA: Massachusetts state cookie; Wikipedia: Ruth Graves Wakefield; Wikipedia: Chocolate chip cookie

M&M's (1941) (1941)

Many accounts, including Wikipedia, say Forrest Mars received a U.S. patent for his sugar-coating process on 3 March 1941, although no record of that patent has been traced at the USPTO. Production began that year in Newark, New Jersey. His partner was Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey president William Murrie, which helped secure chocolate when it was scarce. The U.S. Army was the first big customer, and during the Second World War M&M's were sold only to the military.

How it was made: Mars may have seen soldiers in Spain eating Rowntree's Smarties, a similar sugar-shelled sweet, in the 1930s; Wikipedia treats the link as uncertain.

Where it is now: After wartime chocolate quotas ended, Mars pushed Murrie out of the partnership; Murrie sold his share in 1949 and Mars became Hershey's biggest competitor. M&M's are still made by Mars Inc.

• The name combines the initials of Mars and Murrie.
• A black 'm' was first printed on each candy in 1950; it became white in 1954, the year peanut M&M's appeared, in tan only.
• By 1954 grocery advertisements in Washington's Evening Star were listing 'M& M Candies' next to puddings and margarine.

Try it yourself: M&M's, the sugar-shelled chocolate whose first big customer was the U.S. Army (M&M's milk chocolate candies on Amazon)

Sources: Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 20 May 1954, p. 21: grocery advertisement (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); Hershey Community Archives: William F. R. Murrie, 1873-1950; Gallium Law: M&M's, From the Spanish Civil War to a GI's Favorite Snack; Wikipedia: M&M's

Nutella (1964) (1964)

After the Second World War cocoa was scarce, and Pietro Ferrero of Alba made a hazelnut paste with sugar and a little cocoa, sold in 1946 as a sliceable loaf called Giandujot. In 1951 it became a softer spread, SuperCrema. His son Michele reformulated it and renamed it Nutella, and the first jar left the Alba factory on 20 April 1964.

How it was made: Pietro and his brother Giovanni ran a small pastry shop in Alba from 1946; Pietro experimented, and Giovanni built a sales network across Italy.

Where it is now: Nutella reached the United States in 1983 and was sold in 75 countries by 2015; Ferrero, still family-owned, sells over 35 brands in more than 170 markets.

• Giandujot was named after Gianduja, the carnival character of Turin and Piedmont.
• Today's Nutella is about 13% hazelnuts and 7.4% fat-reduced cocoa; sugar and palm oil make up more than half.
• In 2012 Ferrero paid $3 million to settle a U.S. class action over Nutella's health claims, and Italy issued a stamp for its 50th birthday in 2014.

Try it yourself: Nutella, the 1964 jar descended from the Giandujot loaf (Nutella hazelnut spread jar on Amazon)

Sources: Nutella: Our heritage (the company's own account); Ferrero: A Story of a Family; Wikipedia: Nutella

Côte d'Ivoire becomes the world's top cocoa grower (1978) (1978 to today)

Côte d'Ivoire overtook its neighbour Ghana as the world's leading cocoa producer in 1978. The International Cocoa Organization counted 2.248 million tonnes from Côte d'Ivoire in 2020/21, out of a world total of about 5.2 million. A 2019 World Bank report put cocoa at about 40% of the country's exports. Most of it comes from smallholders on farms of one to three hectares.

How it began: Growth came from smallholder farms, often planted on cleared forest; cocoa is believed to be the main driver of the country's deforestation since 1960.

What became of it: The country still leads, with about 45% of world production in 2024. The cost has been heavy: more than 80% of its forests were lost between 1960 and 2010, and cocoa is thought to be the main cause.

• Much Ivorian cocoa is grown illegally inside protected forests and national parks.
• On 2 April 2024, after farmers threatened to strike, the government raised the mid-crop farmgate price by 50%, from 1,000 to a record 1,500 CFA francs a kilogram.
• The same 2019 World Bank report found that the country earned only about 8% of the total profits of the cocoa-chocolate sector.

Sources: ICCO: Production of cocoa beans, Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics Vol. XLIX No. 4 (2023), PDF; Confectionery News: Cote d'Ivoire raises cocoa farmgate price by 50% after producers threaten strike action (2024); AFP via Rappler: Ivory Coast must overhaul key cocoa sector, World Bank (2019); Al Jazeera: Ivorian cocoa farmers 'barely survive' while chocolate company profits soar (2024); Wikipedia: Cocoa production in Ivory Coast

The bean-to-bar craft movement: Scharffen Berger (1997) (1997 onward)

John Scharffenberger, a winemaker, and Robert Steinberg, a physician who had done a short internship with the Bernachon chocolate firm in Lyon, founded Scharffen Berger in 1996 and made their first chocolate in South San Francisco in 1997. They bought beans from chosen growers and did every step themselves, from roasting to moulding. It is described as the first American company in about 50 years to make chocolate 'from bean to bar', and its high-cacao dark bars helped start a craft movement. Hershey bought the company in August 2005, along with Joseph Schmidt Confections, for a combined $47.1 million; in early 2009 it announced it would close the Bay Area plants. By then dozens of small makers, such as San Francisco's Dandelion (founded 2010) and Missouri's Askinosie, were sourcing single-origin beans directly from farms.

• Hershey's 2005 filing described Scharffen Berger as known for 'high-cacao content, signature dark chocolate bars'.
• Some craft makers skip fair-trade certification, which can cost $8,000 to $10,000, and pay that money to farmers directly instead.
• Robert Steinberg died in 2008, the year before Hershey moved the brand's production out of California.

Try it yourself: A single-origin craft bar, the kind the bean-to-bar makers sell (single origin bean to bar dark chocolate bar on Amazon)

Sources: The Hershey Company, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 2 October 2005, Note 3 (SEC EDGAR); NPR: Bean-To-Bar Chocolate Makers Dare To Bare How It's Done (2013); KALW: From Bean To Bar, The Bay Area's Chocolate Revolution (2019); Wikipedia: Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker

Child labour reporting and the Harkin-Engel Protocol (2001) (2000–2001)

In 2000 British documentaries, including True Vision's Slavery: A Global Investigation, showed trafficked and enslaved children on cocoa farms in Côte d'Ivoire. In 2001 Representative Eliot Engel and Senator Tom Harkin pushed for a 'slave free' label; the House passed it by 291 to 115, but it never reached a Senate vote after industry lobbying. Instead, on 19 September 2001 the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and the World Cocoa Foundation signed a protocol committing the industry to eliminate the worst forms of child labour under ILO Convention 182. Its Article 6 promised industry-wide certification standards by 1 July 2005. That deadline was missed; it was extended by three years and then, in June 2008, to the end of 2010.

• The protocol was signed by the presidents of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and the World Cocoa Foundation, and witnessed by Harkin, Engel, Senator Herb Kohl, Côte d'Ivoire's ambassador Youssoufou Bamba and the head of the ILO's child labour programme.
• A 2010 follow-up declaration set a new goal: to cut the worst forms of child labour by 70% by 2020.
• The International Cocoa Initiative estimates that about 1.56 million children, around 45% of children in cocoa-growing households, are in child labour in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.

Sources: Protocol for the Growing and Processing of Cocoa Beans... (Harkin-Engel Protocol), signed 19 September 2001 (PDF, International Cocoa Initiative); International Cocoa Initiative: Child labour in cocoa; Wikipedia: Children in cocoa production

Ruby chocolate (2017) (5 September 2017)

Barry Callebaut, the Belgian-Swiss cocoa giant, launched ruby chocolate on 5 September 2017 after working on it since 2004. It is pink, with a sour, berry-like taste, and the company says the colour comes from 'ruby' cocoa beans with nothing added. The exact process is a trade secret, though the company holds patents on making red or purple cocoa material. Experts still argue over whether it is a genuinely new kind of chocolate or a clever piece of marketing.

How it was made: Barry Callebaut sold it to food companies rather than shoppers, and Nestlé's KitKat put the first mass-market ruby product on sale in Japan and South Korea in January 2018.

Where it is now: Ruby is now used by many brands, from ice creams to coffee-shop drinks, but it remains a niche next to milk and dark chocolate.

• Because it did not fit U.S. standards for chocolate, the FDA gave Barry Callebaut a temporary permit in November 2019 to test-market about 60 million pounds of it over 15 months.
• The FDA notice lists citric acid among its ingredients and states that ruby chocolate 'contains no added coloring'.
• Craft chocolate makers were sceptical from the start; Confectionery News reported that the craft segment opposed the idea while shoppers seemed more open.

Try it yourself: Callebaut ruby callets, Barry Callebaut's own ruby chocolate for baking (Callebaut ruby chocolate callets RB1 on Amazon)

Sources: Federal Register 84 FR (22 November 2019): 'Ruby Chocolate' Deviating From Identity Standard; Temporary Permit for Market Testing (govinfo PDF); Confectionery News: Ruby chocolate, new gem in confectionery crown or pink misfit? (2017); Wikipedia: Ruby chocolate

The cocoa price spike (2024) (2024)

Poor harvests in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, which grow most of the world's cocoa, drove prices to records in 2024. New York futures first hit records in April, when it became clear that West African output would fall by about a quarter, and closed at a record $12,565 a tonne on 18 December 2024, about three times their level at the end of 2023. In June 2024, the International Cocoa Organization says, London prices averaged $10,251 a tonne. Weather linked to El Niño and climate change cut yields. Tree disease is a long-running drag on output: cacao swollen shoot virus, spread by mealybugs and first found in Ghana in 1936, cuts a tree's yield by about a quarter in its first year of infection and usually kills it within three or four years. Prices were still swinging in June 2025, between about $7,800 a tonne in London and $10,200 in New York.

• Swollen shoot has killed over 200 million cacao trees; Ghana removed more than 28 million infected trees between 2006 and 2010 alone.
• One Ivorian farmer told Al Jazeera his yield had fallen from about 600 kilograms per hectare to about 300.
• In June 2025 the ICCO warned that Ivorian arrival figures might be inflated by double counting of rejected beans and optimistic estimates of truck loads.

Sources: International Cocoa Organization: Cocoa Market Report, June 2025 (PDF); Food Business News: Top 10 food trends for 2025 (cocoa futures record close of $12,565 on 18 December 2024); Al Jazeera: Ivorian cocoa farmers 'barely survive' while chocolate company profits soar (2024); Wikipedia: Cacao swollen shoot virus