First known usage of chocolate was made by the Olmec civilisation in Mexico. (Representational)
Derived from the fruit of cocoa trees which are native to Central and South America, chocolate has come to capture modern day food imagination when it comes to a late night dessert, a passing snack, a stress reliever and definitely something that can be added to your food to give it an indulgent touch. But the way people treated chocolate hasn't always been the same. Throughout history, chocolate has undergone many transformations to evolve into the form that most of us love today.
The story of chocolate starts with the Olmec civilisation in Mexico, who reportedly used the cocoa fruits to create a ceremonial drink. The knowledge of cocoa beans was then passed on to the Central American Mayans who not only consumed chocolate but deeply revered it and it was enjoyed with almost every meal.
When it comes to revering chocolate, it was the Aztecs who took it to an entirely new level by treating chocolate as a currency to buy food and goods. It then became an upper class extravagance although the lower classes continued to enjoy it on weddings or celebrations.
While there are conflicting versions of how chocolate arrived in Europe, one thing that's for certain is that it first arrived in Spain which started importing chocolate around 1585. As other countries started exploring and visiting the South American continent, the chocolate craze began to spread in Europe.
The advent of chocolate in Europe began to change the very flavor of it as the Europeans didn't like it in its concentrated form and hence made their own varieties of hot chocolate with cane sugar, cinnamon and other common spices and flavourings and eventually big chocolate houses propped up in London, Amsterdam and other European cities.
By the 17th century, chocolate had become a fashionable drink in Europe and was belived to have nutritious, medicinal and aphrodisiac properties. The first time powdered chocolate came onto the scene was when a Dutch chemist discovered a way to cut the natural fat and nuetarlise the bitter taste by using alkaline salts.
The iconic chocolate bar come onto the scene was in 1847, when Josephy Fry created a moldable chocolate paste by adding melted cocoa butter back into the Dutch chemist's powdered chocolate. By 1868, then a little company named Cadbury had started producing chocolate bars and some time later milk chocolate hit the markets with the company name, Nestle.
Ever since then chocolate markets have expanded rapidly and something that began as a celebratory drink in South and Central America has evolved into so many forms that the idea of sweet has come to be very closely associated to chocolate. So much so that the worldwide chocolate market is expected to be worth $131.7 Billion by 2019.