A SIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK
The History of Hot Chocolate By Kathy Bradshaw
Hot chocolate brings about thoughts of Hallmark holiday movies, hooded blankets, and cold winter nights. Though its most common American iteration is a watered-down artificially cocoa-flavored elixir derived from a packet of dehydrated powder, it can also be much richer and thicker, served spiked, flavored, or even frozen, accented with marshmallows or crowned with whipped cream. In some countries, they even top their hot chocolate with cheese. Hot cocoa is a cool-weather icon—although it’s readily available year-round, accessible everywhere from vending machines to coffeeshops to countertop microwaves. Here's a look at where this liquid chocolate delicacy came from and why winter without hot chocolate would just be—cold. Hershey-fied standards. The word chocolate likely comes from the Aztec word caahuatl or the Mayan word xocōlātl, which, roughly translated, means “bitter water”—an apt title for this pungent brew. Around 500 B.C., or perhaps even earlier, the Aztecs and Maya began making a bitter and spicy chocolate drink known as chocolatl by first making a paste out of roasted and ground cocoa beans, cornmeal, chili peppers, and spices such as vanilla. They would then add water, pour it back and forth from pot to cup until frothy, and serve it cold. Sugar was still an unheard-of commodity in those days, so the cool, unsweetened beverage was a far cry from a warm mug full of Nestlé.
BRIANA TOZOUR / UNSPLASH
COOL BEANS! Nowadays, chocolate is most frequently associated with bars and bonbons, but people were pouring and sipping chocolate long before they began molding and melting it. Centuries prior to the invention of solid chocolate blocks and tablets, ages before Nutella and chocolate mousse, and hundreds of years before Betty Crocker ever boxed up a chocolate cake mix, chocolate was consumed purely in liquid form. The ancient ancestor of hot chocolate dates back thousands of years to the Aztec, Olmec, and Mayan cultures of what is today Mexico and Central America. Though made from cocoa, this early cocoa-based drink was neither hot nor very chocolatey—at least, not by today’s
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