All you need to know about chocolate!

Everyone knows a lot about chocolate, for most of us, it is our favourite sweet… but where does chocolate come from and what does it have to do with mythology?

Aztecs and Chocolate

Chocolate was not chocolate in the beginning. Imagine you have gone back in time to the time of the Aztecs. The currency was not in money but in cocoa beans. Aztecs worshipped cocoa beans. They believed that cocoa beans had magical properties and were used during important rites such as marriage, birth and death. Victims who were to be sacrificed were given a drink of hot chocolate to ‘cheer’ them up.

Where does the name ‘chocolate’ come from?

The name chocolate comes from the Aztec word ‘xocoatl’ which was a hot spicy drink made cocoa beans. The Latin name for the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, means “food of the gods".

The Spanish and Chocolate

When the Spanish came and conquered the Aztecs, they did not like chocolate initially. Though when they mixed it with honey or sugar they loved it. It became a favoured drink all over Spain and in 1780, the first machine-made chocolate was produced in Barcelona.

Lindt is created

In 1897, Rodolphe Lindt from Berne, Switzerland invented the first ever chocolate that could melt in your mouth. Lindt was born!

Americans and Chocolate

The U.S. government recognized chocolate's role in the Allied Armed Forces. It allocated valuable shipping space for the importation of cocoa beans which would give many weary soldiers the strength to carry. Chocolate has even been taken into space as part of the diet of U.S. astronauts.