Chocolate

What are the three major stimulating Beverages of the World?

Coffee, tea, and chocolate.

Why is the domestication of Coffee, tea, and chocolate unique?

They all contain caffeine and other stimulating compounds but convergently evolved by three different places and are from 3 different plant families.

What is the popular drink from Paraguay? What is its family, and the part of the plant utilized?

Yerba mate from the aquifoliaceae (holly family). And the part of the plant used is the leaves.

What is the the only native caffeine producing plant we have in North America.

Ilex vomitoria from Florida

What is the Caffeine beverage from the Lychee family? Where does it come from and what part of the plant is utilized?

Guarana. From the Sapindaceae. From the Amazon basin. The seeds are grounded and used.

What is the Nahuatl word for the beverage from the cocoa bean versus the Spanish word? And what is the Mayan verb for drinking chocolate together?

Nahuatl: Cacahuatl

Spanish: Chocolate

Mayan: Chocola’j

What is the species name for chocolate and what does the genus and epithet mean?

Theobroma cocao. Theobroma is Greek for “food of the Gods” and Cacao is Spanish for the tree and fruit.

What is the parts of the cocoa fruit?

Seeds are surrounded by an edible flesh with 30-40 seeds.

What is the cocoa’s natural seed disperser?

Monkeys, squirrels, and humans originally ate the flesh

Why are litter-strewn plantations and trees adjacent to forests produce much more cocoa fruit than well-manicured cocoa plantations?

Because the Midges pollinate the cocoa breed in decaying litter on the forest floor because the females are attracted to the protein rich pollen.

Why do only 5% of cocoa flowers develop into fruit?

Too few pollinators visit the trees because their current pollinator is a generalist pollinator.

Why do native species grow more fruit then the cocoa tree?

There are 21 other tree species related to the cocoa and they have an oil producing appendages that attract oil-collecting bees while the Theobroma cocoa does not.

Why does Theobroma cocoa not produce oil?

This is an unintentional byproduct of domestication by artificially selecting and asexual cloning cocoa trees that cannot produce floral oils.

What are the steps that were used to process Cocoa from Ancient times to the 1800s?

Step 1: Remove seeds from the fruit

Step 2: Fermentation: Germinate seed and embryo is killed

Step 3: Seeds are dried

Step 4; Seeds are roasted

Step 5: Winnowing: Reduces alkaloids and other bitter compounds

Step 6: Embryo is grounded on Warm metate and molded into tablets

What is the composition of the cocoa seeds?

50% fat and 50% dry weight. Also contains compounds of anti-oxidants, serotonin, phenylethylamine, and alkaloids of caffeine and theobromine.

What does Theobromine and caffeine serve in cocoa seeds?

They are used to defend plant organs from herbivory because many animals cannot break down or eliminate them, and paralyzes or kills many insects.

How does the composition of the Cola plant tell us about caffeine?

The fruit husk has a trace amount, the seed coat 0.44%, and there is the most caffeine in the embryo because that is the part that needs to be protected the most.

What does fermentation do to the seeds?

It germinates the seeds and kills the embryo and changes the chemistry where there is a lower astringency (less bitter) and a flavor and aroma develop.

What steps are done in the country that cocoa is grown in and when is it done in the importing country?

Steps 1-3 Removing the seeds, fermenting, and drying are done where the cocoa is grown. And the roasting is done in the importing country.

What are cocoa nibs?

Embryos, comes from the winnowing process where the cracked seed coat is removed and the embryos exposed

What is cocoa liquor? And how is it used?

Where the nibs are grounded and the cocoa butter melts into a paste and served as a beverage.

What is the difference between what the Aztecs and Mayans used to flavor chocolate beverages versus the colonists?

Aztecs and Mayans flavored with pepper, allspice, achiote, vanilla, and other plant species. Europeans flavored with sugarcane and cinnamon because sugar was not available to the Americas. Colonists introduced the molinillo.

Finish the time line of chocolate 1502 _______, then in 1519 _________.

1502: Columbus saw cocoa seeds being traded from the Mayans to Yucatan Peninsula

1519: Cortes arrived and found cocoa seeds being used as a currency and beverage of the elite.

What is the evidence that we learned in class showing that cocoa seeds were important to the Aztecs.

Aztecs imposed taxes on tropical lowlands in the form of cocoa seeds and merchants traded them with Mayans and other groups. Aztecs believed that the Flying serpent god brought chocolate to Earth. Cocoa is a sacred tree shown in the cosmic diagram, and beverage was considered to nourish the soul

Fill in the timeline: In 1544 _________, then by the 1600’s _______________, and starting in the mid-1600s ___________.

1544: Introduction of chocolate to Spain. By the 1600’s the royal, clergy, and elite was drinking chocolate. Then starting in the mid-1600s chocolate became available to coffee houses.

How did Europe fulfill their hunger for chocolate?

Chocolate is hard to grow because it requires lowland tropics and requires year-round moisture. So Europeans grew them in their colonial plantations.

What is “Dutching” and when was it invented?

Dutching is using a press to separate cocoa butter from cocoa powder to make a lighter beverage and adding alkali to neutralize the organic acids to make a mild flavor. Invented in 1828 Holland.

What was the next revolution in chocolate after the processing of Dutching?

1847 England learns to blend cocoa powder with cocoa butter in different proportions to create a paste which could be cast in a mold and created he first eating chocolate.

What did Nestle discover?

How to mix milk solids in chocolate to make milk chocolate.