How Montezuma’s Gift Was Spread

So, have you eaten your 12 pounds yet?

That’s what the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Assn. says is the amount of chocolate the average American eats in a single year.

That’s a lot of cocoa butter. But the statistic isn’t surprising, considering how long chocolate has been part of our heritage.

The confection gets its name from chocolatl, the Aztec word for “warm liquid.”

During the conquest of Mexico, Cortez was introduced to the bitter drink by the Emperor Montezuma, who cherished it as a royal food.

The Spaniards took it home with them, tamed its bitterness with sugar, and within a century the drink spread throughout Europe.

In 1847, an English company invented solid “eating chocolate” by reintroducing cocoa butter to the processed coarse-grained chocolate that was common.

In 1876 in Switzerland, Daniel Peter devised a way of adding milk to chocolate, and the treat we know as milk chocolate was born.

The first American chocolate factory was built in 1765, and from then on, production proceeded faster here than anywhere else in the world.

The best way to tell a good chocolate is by mouth feel.

Cocoa butter, the fat that occurs naturally in cocoa beans, gives chocolate its distinctive smoothness.

Because it melts at roughly the same temperature as the human body’s, the higher the cocoa butter content the silkier it feels in your mouth.

Really good chocolate will begin melting the second it hits your tongue. The texture will be smooth and silky without any trace of sugar crystals or graininess.

If it’s hard, brittle or waxy, chances are substances have been added to bring down costs or to avoid the complicated tempering process that’s integral to a perfectly made chocolate.

Of course, much of what we refer to as “chocolates” is actually candy that incorporates chocolate into the manufacturing process.

What you buy at See’s may be called “chocolates,” but they’re actually candy centers that have been coated with chocolate.

And that’s where the real art of candy-making comes in.

The nougats, butter creams, caramels, bordeaux, fudge, cordials, marshmallow and fondant we all love are the products of mixing precisely cooked sugar syrups with butter, cream, egg whites, gelatin, flavorings and other ingredients to create unique flavors and textures.

Here, freshness, quality of ingredients and attention to detail are the most important factors in determining quality.

Candies should always be as fresh as you can get them. Ingredients and flavorings should be as pure or as natural as possible.

The best chocolates have a smooth, creamy texture, and flavors will be vibrant and clean without lingering aftertastes or artificial qualities.

Avoid anything with a sunken or dry appearance or anything with grayish streaks or an oily looking residue on the surface. Also, consistency is extremely important.

If the bordeaux you eat this week is different from the one you had last week, it’s because there’s been a lapse in quality control.

Candy is extremely sensitive to cooking temperatures and mixing techniques. A difference of one or two degrees in the cooking process, or a change in the mixing time by even a minute or two, can mean differences in the consistency of the finished product.