How in Europe it went from exclusive to popular food linked to the divine
Nowadays it is difficult for us Cristóbal Colon to America and that consolidated with the arrival of the Spaniards to Mexico.
A food that every September 13 is commemorated with International Chocolate Day that takes place in honor of the British writer's birth Roald Dahlauthor of 'Charlie and the chocolate factory', one of the most famous books with this sweet delicacy as the protagonist, who was born this day a 1916. A consensus that was also the anniversary of the American chocolatero Milton S. Hersley.
The beginnings of chocolate in Europe
The popularity of chocolate in Europe, however, is due to the fourth trip of Christopher Columbus in which he had his first contacts with cocoa grains, a food that was considered a sacred food of the gods by the Maya or Aztecs, but that the Spaniards introduced with the arrival in Mexico and the trade of the Portuguese.
In its beginnings, the cocoa As a drink similar to that of coffee and its bitterness did not like much among the settlers, which sweetened it with cane or cinnamon sugar, and it would be when it was mixed with milk that would give rise to the hot chocolate drink that was the shape with which the Europeans enjoyed this food.
The hot or cold chocolate drink was consumed by the European high classes, in the case of France it was introduced by the queen Ana of Austriathat he took it as a habit during his evenings, and that he was one of the most demanded. This was the only way until it was introduced as an ingredient for pastry thanks to the recipe book Juan de la Matato which the precursor of the chocolate mousse is considered.
The word chocolate, which comes from the Nahuatl, XOCOATLbut his scientific name refers to that divine aspect that Maya and Aztecs conferred him, with the Greek Theobroma, who coined the botanist Carlos Linneo In the 18th century.
Chocolate: food for high classes to become mass
Chocolate as we know and consume mostly today it did not occur until the nineteenth century, when technological advances allowed it to occur solidly and with different recipes and mixtures, which would result in a chocolate industry.
It was in the nineteenth century when most of the brands and chocolate companies that currently dominate chocolate trade, which chealed it and made it accessible to the most popular classes and change the paradigm of this food, which went from being exclusive to being one of the most consumed in the world by all kinds of people, and even at some times linked to an unhealthy food for its excess sugars at an industrial level.
