When the Spanish came to the Americas, the Aztecs and the Mayans were already cultivating cocoa, both to serve them as a food source and to beautify their cities’ garden. The history of cocoa is steeped in legend and mythology. In Mexico, for example, it is said that the God of the Aztecs, the Lord of the Silver Moon and Icy Winds, gave the men something he had stolen from the gods. Desiring to give it to the mortals, He went to the fields of the Kingdom of the Sun Children and stole seeds of the Sacred Tree. They bore fruit and generated the cocoa tree, which because it is connected to their religion, was cultivated only by priests. For the Aztecs, the cocoa tree – called cacahualt – was sacred, and its cultivation was accompanied by solemn religious ceremonies.
When he conquered Mexico, navigator Fernando Cortez wrote to the king of Spain, Charles V, that Montezuma did not drink twice fromthe same glass of pure gold because he believed that the liquid that resulted from cocoa beans (which were bitter, dark, and had phenomenal nutritional power) had divine origins. The Aztec emperor drank a cocoa mixture with wine or fermented corn puree, spices, chili and pepper, which fed him for an entire day, without the need to ingest any other food. Sometimes the mixture was prepared with cocoa, pepper, chilli, corn and hallucinogenic mushrooms, all powdered and flavoured with nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and vanilla.
Valued so highly, cocoa beans were used by the natives as currency. Montezuma used to receive 200 xiquipils (or 1.6 million seeds) per year as tribute from the city of Tabasco, corresponding to thirty sacks, each weighing sixty kilos. A good slave, on the other hand, could be exchanged for one hundred cocoa beans.
In botanical literature, the plant was classified originally as Cacao fructus. However, the religious beliefs of ancient people may have influenced the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) to change the classification to Theobroma cacao, which in Greek means “food of the Gods”. The new classification has remained to the present. After producing three dissertations on cocoa, the naturalist concluded that in addition to the pleasant taste, the drink made with it had medicinal properties superior to those of coffee and tea.
The cocoa tree is of medium height (five to ten metres) with many branches, belonging to the Sterculiaceae family, which grows well in warm, moist soils, free from prolonged droughts. The fruit can measure up to 20 cm long, containing several rows of seeds (more than 2 cm in length). The seeds are surrounded by an aqueous and acidic white or pink pulp (mucilage).
Brazil officially began to cultivate cocoa in 1679, through a Royal Charter authorising settlers to plant it on their lands. In 1746, some seeds were planted on the banks of the Pardo River in Canavieiras, Bahia. As the climatic conditions, topography and soil of southern Bahia fully met their requirements, the cocoa trees have multiplied. And still today, the vast majority of cocoa is in Northeast Brazil, particularly on the Bahia coast south of Salvador.
In the northern region of the country, attempts to expand cocoa cultivation failed. The Portuguese colonisers discovered wild cocoa on the banks of Amazon River tributaries and took the seeds to Europe, along with other indigenous products such as cassava, pepper and cotton.
One of the oldest documents concerning the presence of cocoa in Bahia is a monograph from 1789 written by Manoel Ferreira da Câmara entitled Ensaio de descrição física e econômica da Comarca dos Ilhéus da América [Physical and economic descriptive essay of the Ilhéus da America County]. This work received an award from the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon.
Among the religious, cocoa consumption caused controversy due to its alleged aphrodisiac properties. Treated as a privilege enjoyed by priests, chocolate came out of convent kitchens in 1615. This was at the wedding of Louis XIII of France to the 14-year-old Infanta, Anne of Austria. During the reception, the priests presented portions of cocoa to the bride and groom. Despite the bitter taste, the French Court immediately approved of the delicacy. From then on in Paris, one of the most sought-after invitations was to be present “for Her Royal Highness’ chocolate.”
The food became much more widespread when it was discovered that it became much tastier when combined with honey and spices. Its industrialisation, however, only began in 1778.
Cocoa is a fickle fruit that demands warm, moist soils with abundant rainfall in areas covered by woods and forests. These are natural factors of regeneration that produce mulch, a layer consisting of plant debris that have fallen from the canopy and become excellent fertiliser, protecting the soil against erosion.
The preparation of the beans (seed) begins by breaking the fruit from the cocoa trees. The fruit is opened and the seeds separated from the mucilage. Then they are transported to the farm buildings in large boxes on the back of donkeys, and placed in troughs to ferment for about a week at a temperature of up to 40oC. After fermentation comes the next phase of drying. Cocoa contains a lot of water that needs to be removed. This can occur through two separate processes. In the first, stoves or dryers heated by firewood are used; and in the second, “barcaças” – large areas with wooden floors on pillars covered by a mobile roof. The roof is removed during the day and replaced at night and when it rains. The seeds need to be shaken regularly to stay well ventilated and avoid mould formation. Once the beans are dried, they are crushed to separate the white film that enwraps it.
Natural drying in the sun provides a good-quality cocoa, whereas artificial drying – through the heat of a wood fire – is inadvisable because it leaves the bean smelling of smoke, affecting the future chocolate’s taste. After drying, the beans are bagged and taken to cocoa processing plants.
In 1828, a Dutch chemist invented a press that separated and removed cocoa butter from the bean. The use of this reduced the bitterness and acidity of chocolate. Near the end of the 19th century, a Swiss confectioner took his product to Henry Nestlé. The latter was an evaporated milk manufacturer who had also enhanced a condensed milk recipe. Together they had the happy idea of adding condensed milk to chocolate, thereby producing chocolate milk. The confectioner was responsible for creating the conching process, which gave the chocolate a finer and velvety texture. The process was so named because the blades that move and refine the product have the shape of conches.
In 1879, Rodolphe Lindt added cocoa butter to chocolate, creating a more elaborate product that melted in the mouth and was similar to chocolate consumed today. It is worth noting that chocolate manufacturing involves five major steps: kneading, refining, conching, tempering and molding. These steps are extremely delicate and often, when there is an oversight, a whole batch is lost.
Produced from the white or pink, sweet and mucilaginous cocoa pulp are juices, jams, soft drinks, fine spirits, wine and vinegar, ice cream and sweets. The juice has an exotic flavour and is pleasant to the taste, resembling the juices of some tropical fruits like graviola (soursop), bacuri and cupuaçu. It is rich in vitamins, pectin and sugars (glucose, fructose and sucrose), and looks pasty with a high viscosity.
Technicians from the Ministry of Agriculture’s Executive Committee of the Plan of Cocoa Farming (CEPLAC) have conducted research aimed at fully using by-products and post-harvest waste. After going through certain transformations, the fruit’s peel is used for animal feed, both in natura and as in flour form. The peel is also used for the production of biogas and bio-fertiliser through the process of composting or vermicomposting. A ton of beans generates eight tons of fresh peel.
The greatest phytopathological threat to cocoa trees is the fungus known as witch’s broom, which originated in Amazônia and was only discovered in Bahia in 1989. It causes necrosis in the cocoa tree, leaving the plant with the appearance of an old broom, hence its name. This fungus has drastically reduced cocoa production in the country, which fell from 320,500 tons in 1991 to 191,100 tons in 2000, causing major economic and social impacts in the region.
In the past, Brazil was the largest cocoa exporter. Although no longer on top at present, the country is still one of the largest producers, along with Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ecuador. On the other hand, the largest cocoa importers are the United States, Holland, France, England and Germany.
The height of the cocoa cultivation occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During World War I, soldiers were already carrying chocolates as emergency rations for future needs. However, they could not keep them for long: they ate up the goodies at the first sign of hunger.
Jorge Amado, famous Bahian writer, recorded the difficult life that accompanied cocoa cultivation in the trilogy O País do Carnaval [The Country of Carnival] (1931), Cacau [Cocoa] (1933), and Suor [Sweat] (1934), novels that have been translated into several foreign languages.
In the 21st century, cocoa derivatives are part of people’s lives and are used in puddings, cakes, sweets, syrups and aperitifs. Manufactured are milk chocolate (cocoa paste, cocoa butter, sugar and powder milk); dark chocolate (partially processed, bitter tasting, composed of cocoa paste and cocoa butter); white chocolate (cocoa butter, sugar and milk); powdered chocolate (grated cocoa beans); as well as chocolates filled with various fruits (mango, cherry, cupuaçu, grape, strawberry, guava, raspberry), with spices (cinnamon, vanilla, clove, nutmeg, anise, mint, pepper, rosemary), with sweet milk, caramel, tea, hazelnut, wine, Cointreau, rum, cappuccino, walnut, coffee, cashew, Brazil nut and pistachio. Also produced industrially or handcrafted are truffles: white, dark, semi-dark, honey, Champagne, cheese, coffee and others.
Shirts, clay sculptures, bags, tapestries, pieces of crochet and dolls, alluding to cocoa cultivation, as well as cocoa liquor, are part of Northeast Brazilian folklore. Homemade and/or processed chocolate eggs are very popular, including in Easter celebrations.
Finally, we must emphasize that chocolate, the “food of the gods” for the Aztecs, the delight that captured the nobility and clergy of Europe for centuries, has to be consumed with parsimony: it is high in fat and highly caloric. Despite producing a sense of calm and well-being and increasing your physical and mental disposition, the delicious delicacy, unfortunately, makes you fat.
Recife, 13 June 2009.
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how to quote this text
VAINSENCHER, Semira Adler. Cocoa (Cacau). In: Pesquisa Escolar. Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, 2009. Disponível em:https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/en/artigo/cocoa-cacau/. Acesso em: dia mês ano. (Ex.: 6 ago. 2020.)