A YUM Publication
No. 7 Vol. 2
By Henry M. Holden hat is rich, creamy, and sweet: Even the adjectives used to describe the substance are enough to make the strong-willed drool. You crave it. It melts in your mouth. It comes in different forms, cocoa powder, milk chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, and white chocolate. Chocolate gifts have strong symbolic meanings such as love, passion, care, and a happy life. It is a simple gift that surprises us. Forest Gump even said, “Momma always said life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Every February 14, St. Valentine’s Day, chocolate lovers are drawn to the object of their desire. A box of chocolates is a customary gift on Valentine’s Day, and only the most puritanical among us could spurn this devilish offering. The confectionery industry is indeed a significant player in the U.S. economy, providing jobs and supporting various related industries. It’s fascinating how something as delightful as candy can have such a substantial impact on employment and economic activity. Here is the delicious sweet truth! According to the National Confectioners Association, Manufacturers of chocolate, candy, gum and mints directly employ nearly 58,000 people across the United States with almost 700,000 jobs supported in related industries, including agriculture, retail, transportation and more. Altogether, the confectionery industry contributes more than $37 billion in retail sales to the U.S. economy each year and has at least one manufacturing facility in each of the fifty United States. Almost $1.8 billion in sales, mostly chocolate kisses and hearts are made each February 14. It is third in sales with only Easter and Christmas beating it out. If you were to merge all the candy companies into one devoted to the sale of Valentine’s Day candy alone, it would carry a Fortune 500 ranking. More than 70 million Hershey kisses chocolates are produced each day at the companies three factories. For the Valentine’s Day demand, the Hershey company produces more than 8,000,000 pounds of kisses which at about 95 kisses per pound comes out to more than 750, million individual candies. How did the love affair with chocolate begin? Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that can be a liquid, solid, or paste, or on its own as a flavoring in other foods. The cacao tree has been used as a source of food for at least 5,300 years, starting with the Mayo-Chinchipe culture (present-day Ecuador.) Later, Mesoamerican civilizations consumed cacao beverages and introduced it to Europe in the 16th century. In the 1540s, an Aztec document containing a list of price equivalents designated the value of a tomato as one cacao bean, and an avocado was worth three. A “good turkey hen” was worth 100 “full” or 120 “shrunken” cacao beans. Since there are only about 60 cocoa beans in one cocoa pod, this
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FEBRUARY 2025
The Lure of Chocolate
was a great sum of money. In 1569, the new chocolate drink got its seal of approval from Pope Pius V, who proposed that people can drink chocolate on Fridays (and during Lent) and it would not break the fast, which was a normal thing to do at the time. This possibly happened because the Pope didn’t like chocolate and didn’t care if people consumed it or not. Back in the 16th century- gold, silver, and precious stones were not the only loot that traveled back across the Atlantic as the Americas opened to European exploitation. One unforgettable treasure was a little brown bean that some natives of the warmer regions of the New World swore by: From the bean they made a bitter but palatable drink known in the Nahuatl tongue of the Aztec of Mexico as cacahuatl. On Good Friday, in 1528, things were about to change in Mexico. A fleet of Spanish ships appeared off the coast of Mexico. Hernando Cortés disembarked his entire army of 500 helmeted, armor-clad men, with weapons that belched fire and thunder and hurled invisible and deadly missiles. Emperor Montezuma II, was both amazed and almost paralyzed with fear. He believed the Aztec legend that the white conquistador had embodied the god of air, Quetzahcoatl and was returning to earth to claim his throne. Montezuma’s hesitation to neutralize this handful of Spanish adventurers was to lead to his downfall and the incredible conquest of his powerful empire. As Montezuma dawdled indecisively, Cortéz began his march toward the capital, today’s Mexico City. Instead of leading his vast army into a precise campaign to overwhelm the few hundred invaders, Montezuma dispatched messengers to Cortés with gold, silver, and other treasures. Satisfying the gods with such gifts and sometimes even human sacrifices was common in the Aztec culture. Montezuma hoped that the celestial invaders could be bought off and would go away. Cortés, however, fooled the Aztecs and simply accepted the emperor’s bribes, demanded
more, and then continued his march. The emperor’s ransom also included cacao beans. Montezuma considered cacahuatl an nectar from the gods; and too good for the common people. Indeed, the Aztecs, Mayans, and Toltecs before him valued chocolate so highly that they used the cacao beans as currency: caches of the beans were among the artifacts recovered from the grave sites of these civilizations. Serving cacahuatl to the Spanish conquerors in great golden goblets, Montezuma also revealed to Cortés that it had a secret ingredient; he confided that he drank chocolate by the potful because it enhanced his sexual powers. For all its regal importance, however, Montezuma’s cacahuatl was not sweet, and the Spaniards did not find it to their taste. To make the concoction more agreeable, Cortés and his countrymen later sweetened it with sugar . Cortés sent his newfound treasure back to King Carlos V of Spain, explaining its benefits more delicately than Montezuma had: “It is the divine drink that builds up resistance and fights fatigue.” This delightful plunder entranced the nobility: They became so possessive of it that they kept its existence a secret from outsiders for nearly 100 years. Spanish monks eventually spilled the beans-so-to-speak and the secret was out. It was not long before chocolate gained acclaim throughout Europe as a delicious, health-giving food. Even when the rest of Europe discovered chocolate, it remained for many years the prerogative of the wealthy and influential. Around 1657, chocolate spread across the English Channel to Britain. And by 1765, chocolate completed the circle from New World to Old and back again, Today we credit Thomas Jefferson with opening the first chocolate factory, in Massachusetts Bay. In 1828, a Dutchman named Van Houton discovered how to press the fat cocoa butterout of chocolate. This was a breakthrough in chocolate’s development, and it yielded some important byproducts as well: Cocoa butter is now used in soaps, cosmetics, and suntan oils. Van Houton also discovered hot cocoa when he mixed the powder that remained after he had pressed out the fat with water. In 1850, he added sugar and cocoa butter paste to ground beans, creating a sweet form of the substance. Twenty-five years later, the Swiss developed the first version of milk chocolate, and Henry Nestle improved on it by using condensed milk. But the man who really made America fall in love with chocolate was Milton Hershey, who developed the old Valentine standby, Hershey’s Kisses. Today, a city has been virtually built on one Kiss at a time. Hershey, Pennsylvania is home: to the world’s largest chocolate factory. It covers more than 18 acres. Hershey started out in 1900 with a caramel factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He sold it in 1903 for $1 million and built a cont. on page 2