Theobroma cacao and the development of chocolate

The plant source for cacao is a small tropical and subtropical tree, Theobroma cacao (Malvaceae). It is native to southern Mexico, Central America and tropical South America.

The tree was cultivated by both Aztec, Mayan and Inca cultures by at least 600 AD. The first well documented plantations were Mayan from the Yucatan of Mexico.

The name Theobroma is Latin for “drink of the gods” [theo – gods; broma – drink].

The drink the Mayas prepared bears little similarity to what you think of as hot chocolate or cocoa. The Mayan drink had crushed cocoa beans, ground hot chili pepper, other spices, vanilla, and a sweetener (usually honey) mixed in water. The beverage was served cold after whipping the mixture into a froth.

Cacao is the subject of a number of AmerIndian myths:

The Mayans believed that cacao was discovered by the gods in a mountain with other ‘delectable’ foods. The Plumed Serpent gave cacao to the Mayans and they celebrated an annual festival to honor their cacao god, Ek Chuah, with various sacrifices.

Ek Chuah is the god of Mayan merchants, usually depicted with a sac of goods on his back. The tie to cacao is that the beans were currency in Mayan culture.

The Aztecs believe the god Quetzalcoatl discovered and gave them cacao from in a mountain filled with other plant foods. Cacao beans were covered in human blood as a sacrifice in the god’s honor. He is the god of good and light in opposition to Tetzcatlipoca, the god of darkness and evil. Quetzalcoatl is not a god of merchants, but a god of war. He may even have been a mythical figure derived from the Mayan god after the Toltecs expanded southward into northern South America.

Similar, eh!

Cacao was brought from the Americas back to Europe in 1502 by Columbus, who thought cacao beans were strictly a currency. The drink, called xhocolatyl (approximate spelling), was not known in Europe until 1544, when Mayan nobles introduced it to the Spanish court.

Cacao was not only a drink, but a folk medicine.

The ‘active ingredients’ include:

theobromine and caffeine, stimulants;

theophylline, a potent CNS and cardiovascular stimulant with diuretic and bronchial smooth muscle relaxant properties;

and, lastly, phenylethylamine.

People who suffer extreme depression as victims of unrequited love have an irregular production of phenylethylamine. Such individuals often go on chocolate binge during periods of depression. Chocolate is particularly high in phenylethylamine, perhaps serving as medication.

It’s also a good source of antioxidants.

There are other species of Theobroma, but only T. cacao is widely cultivated. It is an understory tree. There are three major cultivars (and many more “sub-cultivars”):

The criollo group – this is the type grown and used by the Maya. This type is the least productive, with fewer fruits maturing on the trees. It is also considered to have the best flavor (least bitter, most aromatic). It grows in southern Mexico, Central America, Venezuela and Columbia.

Most chocolate is made from beans of the forastero group. These trees are hardier and more productive. This type is grown in Brazil and West Africa.

The third type is the trinitario group. It was produced by crossing plants of the other two types, criollo from Trinidad and Brazilian forastero. As you might expect, it is intermediate in most characteristics.

All three types are now widely grown in the tropics, and world production extends to many areas (70,000 km2 in total).

Global production:Ivory Coast 40%Ghana 15%Indonesia 15%also Brazil, Nigeria, Cameroon, Guatemala, Ecuador and Venezuela (Chuao, supposedly the world’s best)

All is not well in the world of chocolate. An estimated 200,000 children per year are taken from families in central Africa and turned into slave labor in the Ivory Coast and Benin to harvest cacao.

Conditions on the cacao plantations are apparently horrible, yet the major producers of the chocolate we eat, isolated by layers of processors and traders, are indirectly supporting that slavery.

Public concern, created by news media finally reporting the chocolate slavery, has led the major producers (Cadbury, Fry, Nestle’s and Hershey) to ask for investigation. However, they continue to buy African beans to manufacture chocolate.

What are the nutritional characteristics of cacao (per 100g) [NB cacao, not cocoa]?

12.0 g protein46.3 g fat34.7 g total carbohydrate 8.6 g fiber106 mg Ca537 mg Pthiamine, niacin, riboflavin and Vitamin C

Much of that fat is removed as cocoa butter before and during chocolate production. Cocoa butter is used both in food and in various cosmetic products.

The production process:

1. Trees begin to flower and produce fruit at ~5 years old. A mature tree produces about 20 pods/year. Fruits take 5-6 months to mature after flowering. Flowers are pollinated by midges (tiny flies). Pods are green at initial maturity. They weigh about 500g and contain 20-60 ‘cocoa beans’. Pods are cut from the tree (they don’t fall and dehisce on their own) and allowed to ferment (mellow) on the ground, turning yellow to orange in the process.

2. Pods are cracked open, the beans and white pulp are removed, and the husks burned. The beans and pulp are laid out and allowed to ferment. The pulp liquefies and ‘runs off’.

3. Beans are further fermented (in Africa in leaf-lined kegs) for 2-8 days (called sweating, and apparently important in the final flavour, then dried in the sun. Fermentation changes the bean colour from white to purple, and drying from purple to brown.

Dry beans are moved from plantations to factories for the remaining steps.

4. The beans are cracked open, the hull and seed coat removed. What remains are the embryo and the cotyledons. Dry beans (usually the cotyledons only, now called nibs) are roasted at temperatures ranging from 120 – 140°C for from 20 minutes to an hour. This completes the development of chocolate flavor.

5. The roasted nibs are ground into a powder. Due to the fat content, the powder is not dry, but an oily paste, now called chocolate liquor. The grinding is repeated a number of times to make the paste smooth.

6. If much of the cocoa butter remains, the paste can be hardened into baking chocolate, or ground with sugar into a smooth paste and ‘conched’ to produce dark chocolate. Rudolphe Lindt developed the machine to ‘conche’ chocolate (continuously grind and mix for days).

7. If the cocoa butter is removed, then the paste can be hardened into a cake which is then ground into cocoa powder. The dry powder did not mix well in milk or water. J. Van Houten developed both the cocoa press to remove the cocoa butter and an alkali process (during roasting) that reduces cocoa acidity and increases solubility. Since Van Houten was Dutch, the process is called “dutching”.

8. If milk is added during grinding and conching, milk chocolate is the resulting product. Cocoa butter is one of the reasons for chocolate’s success. It is a solid fat below about 25°C, but liquefies at higher temperature (literally melts in your mouth).