This has prompted grass roots efforts for large chocolate companies to reconsider how they get their cocoa supply. A Brief History of Chocolate. Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry. The Food Empowerment Project. Chocolate-Making Conch. The National Museum of American History. Chocolate Use in Early Aztec Cultures. International Cocoa Association.
History of Chocolate: Chocolate in the Colonies. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The Bittersweet History of Chocolate. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
Teotihuacan is an ancient Mesoamerican city located 30 miles 50 km northeast of modern-day Mexico City. A country rich in history, tradition and culture, Mexico is made up of 31 states and one federal district. It is the third largest country in Latin America and has one of the largest populations—more than million—making it the home of more Spanish speakers than any other But for New discoveries are still being unearthed in the area, providing even more insight into the culture and The Maya Empire, centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, reached the peak of its power and influence around the sixth century A.
The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing The ancient Maya, a diverse group of indigenous people who lived in parts of present-day Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, had one of the most sophisticated and complex civilizations in the Western Hemisphere. Between about and A. This low, flat state still has a large indigenous population that lives primarily in rural areas.
Contrary to popular belief, Tabasco was not named after the spicy peppers of the same name, though the state is a major producer of other farm products, including cacao, coconuts, Chiapas ranks second among the Mexican states in the production of cacao, the product used Because it was relatively isolated from the rest of Mexico until recently, the state developed its own unique culture.
Today, service-based companies account for about Live TV. This Day In History. Everyone loves chocolate But not everyone knows where it comes from. To hear the story of how cacao is harvested, transported, and transformed is to know the wonder of chocolate — its science, flavor, and art.
Lake Champlain Chocolates is a chocolatier — crafting finished chocolate into confections and bars, as opposed to a chocolate maker that sources raw cacao beans to roast, winnow, grind, and mould into single-origin bars. And it starts with the tree, pod, and bean. Each tree bears oval fruits, or pods, which are about 5—12 inches long. What is the difference between cocoa and cacao?
Hanging from the trunk and largest branches on small stems, the ripening pods are typically harvested twice per year, though they can be harvested continually. After being chopped off, the pods are opened and their seeds are removed. Each seed is about the size of an olive. In Latin America this pulp, called baba , was used to make a fermented cacao wine as early as 3, years ago.
Beans are cleaned by hand, with the baba left on to help develop flavor. Exposed to light, the cream-colored beans turn a purplish color. In both methods, beans are covered with banana leaves.
Direct roasting without pre-roasting The beans, still in their shells, are roasted and then shelled all at once. This older and more traditional method allows the flavor to develop properly. Both techniques are still used today and each has its advocates. The use of pre-roasting is more productive, but some varieties of beans, when shelled, can be damaged by a too-violent change in temperature during roasting. Roasting dries and browns the cocoa beans and develops their flavor.
This is the first important stage in the manufacturer's 'customization' of the product. Earlier, fermentation has produced the flavor precursors: reducing sugars, glucose and fructose, and amino-acids. Even though roasting can only reinforce the results of good fermentation, it can only also spoil very high-quality beans if not done correctly. With all of the methods, the basic technique is the same. Subject the cocoa beans to a high temperature initially, slowly reduce the temperature and stop the roast when the beans are "cracking", but before they start to burn.
The initial high heat lets the beans gain some thermal momentum and allows for a good separation of the husk and nibs as the beans expand. You lower the ambient temperature so as not to burn the outside of the bean, but let the interior continue to roast.
Finally, the cocoa beans will start to pop and crack as water vapor is explosively released. This happens when the cocoa bean temperature is around F. This is your sign you are just about done roasting. Experience and smell you don't want any burned smell are the key indicators when the beans are roasted. Once the cocoa beans are roasted and cooled, try separating the husk from one. If it comes off easily, you did well and the beans are fully roasted.
Likewise, taste some. They should have a nice cocoa flavor, with no raw or burned flavors. After roasting, the beans are "winnowed" to remove the shells from around the bean, leaving only the roasted cocoa nib, which is the key ingredient for making chocolate. Machines crack the beans open. Then powerful fans blow over the beans carrying the lighter shells away, leaving behind pure cocoa pieces called nibs.
After roasting and winnowing, the cocoa nibs are ground into a paste called chocolate liquor a. Chocolate liquor contains both cocoa solids and cocoa butter in roughly equal proportion. Cocoa liquor is not alcoholic; it is so named because it flows out in liquid form. Cocoa liquor is a deep, dark brown color, extremely aromatic with a rich, bitter taste.
Cocoa liquor can rightfully be thought of as the "essence of the bean". Cocoa liquor contains over chemical compounds that give chocolate its addictive, aphrodisiac and euphoria-inducing attributes. The liquor imparts the distinctive flavor and aroma to finished chocolate. Chocolate liquor can either be used directly in the production of chocolate bars or further processed to separate the fat, known as cocoa butter, from the cocoa solid, leaving cocoa presscake.
Cocoa butter imparts no flavor or aroma at all to the finished chocolate. It is a fat and imparts the wonderful smoothness — what is termed "mouth feel" to chocolate. Cocoa butter has a very low melting point it melts at body temperature and is expressed as a clear liquid that floats to the top of a vessel while the dense cocoa liquor settles to the bottom much as oil and vinegar separate with a clear line of demarcation between the two ingredients.
The penultimate process is called conching. Conching further refines the chocolate mass with continued grinding. It is at this stage in manufacturing where the maker adds more ingredients such as sugar, milk powder only if making milk chocolate and other ingredients and flavorings. Each chocolate maker has his or her own preferred time for conching. It can be as little as a few hours or as long as a few days.
The process affects the size of the particles in the chocolate when finished, and the chemical structure of the chocolate, which affects the flavor of the product. Chocolate prior to conching has an uneven and gritty texture. The conching process produces cocoa and sugar particles smaller than the tongue can detect, hence the smooth feel in the mouth. Chocolate liquor is blended with cocoa butter in various quantities to make different types of chocolate. The basic blends of ingredients for the various types of chocolate in order of highest quantity of cocoa liquor first , are: Dark chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, and sometimes vanilla Milk chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, milk or milk powder, and vanilla White chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, milk or milk powder, and vanilla.
The final process in making chocolate is called tempering.
0コメント