The seeds of the cocoa tree were discarded by burning, and as they grew hot in the fire they gave off a sweet and enticing aroma. This turned out to be a happy accident for both the Mayans and all of us today. When the Mayans tasted the roasted cocoa beans, they found the flavour surprisingly tasty. In time, they learned to crush the roasted beans and mix the resulting powder with water to create a thick and heavily spiced beverage called chocolatl.
The Mayans grew cocoa in such abundance that they accumulated a surplus and began selling the beans to other peoples. Dried cocoa beans were also used as currency and, for example, a rabbit could be purchased for 10 beans. The Mayans believed that cocoa was a gift from the gods and that the beverage made from it was divine, which is perhaps not so strange.
Chocolate comes to Europe
The first European to taste this revered beverage was Christopher Columbus, who crossed the Atlantic in search of the sea route to India and landed on what is today Honduras in 1502. Columbus found the cocoa concoction so bitter and unappealing that he immediately spat it out.
Unlike Columbus, the Spanish conquistador Cortes, who arrived in Central America in 1517, developed such a taste for the pungent brew that he set up his own plantation to grow cocoa, the precious brown gold. On returning to Europe in 1528, he brought a load of cocoa beans and entranced the entire Spanish court with the exotic drink made from these.
Cocoa started its slow spread across Europe in the 1600s. In 1615, after having it carefully examined and pronounced harmless, the French king Louis XIII’s Spanish-born wife Anna approved the drink for use in the royal court. The English welcomed the beverage enthusiastically and opened the first chocolate houses – the predecessor of tea houses – as early as 1657. By the turn of the century there were more than 2,000 such establishments in London alone.
From cocoa to chocolate
Although edible, if not particularly flavourful, chocolate was being produced from cocoa as early as the 1600s, the first true chocolate was made in the early 1800s. At that time, the Dutchman C.J. Van Houten built the first cocoa press, making it possible extract the fat from cocoa beans so that the right proportions of cocoa powder and cocoa butter could be blended.
The first chocolate factory in Europe opened in Switzerland during 1817. The type of chocolate most closely resembling that which is sold today was created in 1880 when the Rudolph Lindt of Switzerland developed a new method call “conching”, in which the chocolate was kept fluid for several days before allowing it to harden in moulds. This marked that start of chocolate’s breakthrough as the most prized of delicacies and the source of many blissful taste sensations.
Carl Linneus, the father of taxonomic botany, lived in an era when cocoa in both drinkable and edible form had spread to the European countries. In 1753 he gave cocoa the Latin name of Theobroma cacao – food of the gods.
Cloetta and Fazer in the Nordic region
The histories and traditions of Cloetta and Fazer extend back more than 100 years in time, to 19th century Europe, when the finest chocolate was made in Switzerland, Russia and France. The founders of both companies, the Cloetta brothers and Karl Fazer, came from Swiss families and were trained by the foremost masters of their time. Driven by high quality standards and an international spirit, these young and enthusiastic entrepreneurs went on to make a lasting name for themselves.
The three Cloetta brothers Bernhard, Nutin and Christoffer travelled to Paris to learn the trade of chocolate making – and then headed north to Copenhagen where they established the Cloetta company in 1862. Their next and final destination was Sweden and since 1901 the company is based there, in the town of Ljungsbro.
Karl Fazer trained as a pastry chef in St. Petersburg, Berlin and Paris. His dream was realised in 1891 when he opened a French-Russian Café in the heart of Helsinki, where the ambition was to not only satisfy but consistently exceed customer expectations.