An Adventure Filled With Chocolate

In an old-fashioned candy shop with a décor of peaceful woods walks a polite boy wearing an oxford blue jacket. Standing out in the small store due to the neatly combed blonde dome attached to his head, the boy is able to quickly grab the attention of the gregarious salesman. “I’d like a bar of chocolate please.” The clerk asks for a more specific request. “Whichever’s the biggest.” As the boy hastily opens the bar, momentarily forgetting that it ought to be paid for, the clerk, sounding relieved, states that he need not to hide the bars any longer.

Don’t for-profit businesses, corporate and community alike, exist to generate green paper? Why keep secret a profitable product? Prizes. Indeed. Apparently, within the confines of the town, a mere four tickets have been dispersed among hundreds, if not thousands, of town folks. Said tickets are made of glistening gold. Simple as they are, such tickets are the bullseye of conversations between the citizens. Besides the fact that these tickets are, well, made of gold, what distinguishes them from ordinary rectangular pieces of paper?

Each one of these golden tickets grants its respective holder a visit to a factory; not just any factory, but a candy factory owned by a millionaire man no less jolly than Santa Claus and no less buoyant than the Easter Bunny. This man goes by the name of Willy Wonka. However, as stated above, only a dearth of tickets exists. With all the tickets claimed, the boy has no hope of ever partaking on the grand adventure…or so he thinks. Shortly after the boy receives a second chocolate bar, he hears some special news. There seems to have been a miscommunication. There exist not four, but five, golden tickets. The boy opens the bar and becomes the fifth winner of the once-in-a-lifetime trip.

Bursting with excitement, and with the support of the benevolent townspeople, the boy makes a run towards his house. This takes place near the beginning of a movie called Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

With the above imagery in mind, where does chocolate come from? The ground? The sky? The ocean? No, no, and no. That delicious dark chocolate Hershey’s bar you see at the supermarket started its life as a cacao bean; or rather, more precisely, several beans were combined to form it, akin to the collection of cells that form an embryo, be it a caribou, caracal, or cassowary. Ah, you may think, so do the beans themselves come from eggs? If so, are the eggs internal like those of the mammalian caribou and caracal, or external like those of the avian cassowary?

I kid, of course. You obviously know that chocolate beans come from no eggs. Research reveals that these beans come from trees, even if the mammoth lumps of cash possessed by Wonka don’t. Commonly known as cacao trees, Theobroma cacao was famous in Greece for being the oh so flavorful food of the grandiose gods. Each surrounded by a comfortable marshmallow white flesh, the beans rest in rows inside of a fruit pod. As these beans slumber together, they hold the very fat that will later be used to create cocoa butter, which is one of the ingredients of chocolate.

Cacao hails from tropical, humid areas. The climate that the cacao beans sprout from will significantly affect the flavor profile of the chocolate they help create. Nevertheless, the beans must be fermented and dried before being shipped outside their native lands. The fermentation process modifies the acidity of the beans, and the drying process prevents the growing of gross mold. The fermented cocoa beans are subsequently roasted and crushed to form a fluid. Cocoa butter and sugar are added to create that luscious liquid we know as chocolate.

If you scan the above text more closely, you will notice two words – cacao and cocoa. The former refers to the brown beans on the tree, whereas the latter is the name given to the beans after fermentation.

Chocolate has existed for thousands of years. However, it was not the confection we know today. During ancient times, chocolate was bitter. Chocolate was not what we’d consider a delicacy until 16th century Europeans obtained the beans and mixed them with cane sugar and cinnamon. First, the Spanish got dibs on the treat; then, the Italians and French. Eventually, chocolate became popular across Europe, being the linchpin of countless festivals among the wealthy.

Until the creation of cacao powder, only those residing in the upper echelons of society could comfort their palates with chocolate. Commoners were left in the dust. Cacao powder was created in the early 1800s by a Dutch chemist named Coenraad van Houten. The scientist discovered a way to use alkaline salts to alter cacao beans. This powder generated from this chemical alteration enabled the existence of the brown powder.

Nowadays, anyone, not just noblemen, can snack on chocolate. The treat comes in many forms; the cozy hot chocolate from Nestle on a cool autumn night; Linda’s Fudge Cake from the Cheesecake Factory that is layered like a stack of pancakes; chocolate Swiss rolls made by a little farm girl named Debbie. All of these famous delights have the same starting point as that dark chocolate Hersey’s bar you saw sitting on the shelf, waiting to be picked by a buyer as a flower waits to be pollinated by a bee.