Theobroma - Xocolatl - Chocolate

Food of the Gods. That was the very first name for chocolate. In other words, that is what chocolate means in Aztec. Columbus was the first European to discover cacao beans in his fourth and last voyage to the Americas. These beans were used as a form of currency among the native people he encountered. He wasn't much impressed. It was Cortez, twenty years later, who brought a boat-load of these babies back to Spain. Cacao beans were considered to have magical healing powers by the ancient Mayan, Incas and Aztecs. Montezuma used to sip a bitter concoction of ground beans, vanilla and chillis all day long. It was considered the drink of royalty which conveyed power and virility. (Although I think Montezuma eventually went mad, so perhaps drinking chocolate all day long is not a very good idea - everything in moderation).
Europeans were not necessarily delighted by this first concoction of bitter cacao and chillis - it was definitely an acquired taste. Soon enough, they replaced the chilli with sugar and the popularity of the drink began to soar. (That's the heroin-like addiction thing starting to kick in). It was a drink of the nobility of course, as shipments of the beans were still rare and the price was steep. The chocolate that we know today was in fact a European invention that began in the early 1800's when a Dutch chemist squeezed out half the cocoa butter from the beans using a hydraulic press, pulverized what was left, and added potassium or sodium carbonates to make a powder that was easier to mix with water. This became known as Dutch Process, or Dutching and it is still how cocoa powder is made today. From there the powder could be mixed with sugar and chocolate drinks were then much easier to make. Later on that century, an Englishman figured out how to make an edible chocolate by reintroducing the extracted cocoa butter to the powder and sugar mix. (God bless the English for their devotion to saturated fat!) The Swiss grabbed the ball at that point and figured out how to blend it into the smooth consistency we have come to expect from chocolate by a process called "conching". They also introduced their own most recently created product, dried milk, to make what is now known as milk chocolate. So while it took a good three hundred years from the first shipments of beans to the first Nestle and Lindt bars, it was truly a European collaboration to make the EU proud. As our knowledge of nutrition has evolved in leaps and bounds, we now know that sugar is bad for us, and so is powdered milk. Saturated fat, on the other hand, has been acquitted as nutritionists now believe it is a very essential nutrient indeed. Therefore, the verdict stands that the English contribution to modern-day chocolate is by far the the wisest and most nutritious. God Save the Queen.