Chocolate

3 Pages 735 Words

After his forth voyage to the new world Christopher Columbus brought back with him the cocoa beans. The cocoa beans are an almond shaped bean from the cacao tree. It is a long process to harvest the beans; Christopher Columbus must have stumbled on them at the perfect time.
The cacao tree can only grow well in tropical climates. The best for the tree is 20 degrees north and/or south of the equator. It takes the plant five years to bear the fruit pods that you can harvest the cocoa beans from. The pods contain 20 to 0 cocoa beans; it takes about 400 beans to make a pound of chocolate liquor.
Hernando Cortez, the Spanish explorer, later found out that the Aztec Emperor had been drinking chocolate liquor for years. He drank up to 50 or more portions a day. They also used the cocoa beans as a trade. It was such a high value item because they had to travel to retrieve it. The Aztec people would trade four cocoa beans for a turkey.
Mass production of chocolate did not begin till around 1770 when James Watt invented the cocoa bean grinding process. And then later another man recreated chocolate by making it in a solid form. Which so many people enjoy today all around the world. After all of this once again chocolate was improved a man in Switzerland added milk to chocolate and found out it was a great new product. He also named the new chocolate, milk chocolate. Chocolate started out with being liquor for only the rich. Then changed to a bar form which is eaten by everyone all over the world. There are thousands of companies the produce different chocolate products. You can go into any kind of store and get a candy bar.
Chocolate now a day is still looked as something you should have in moderation and as a rarity. Chocolate is given at many holidays and for different reasons. Valentine’s Day started on February 14th, 27 A.D. when a roman priest named Valentine was beheaded. He married many sets of young roman lov...