QuoteReplyTopic: Foreign Influences on Europe. Posted: 08-May-2008 at 16:07
Originally posted by King John
There is, however, a point when innovation become an invention. Take chocolate, the innovation led to the invention of modern chocolate - that is chocolate as a sweet not a spice. The meaning of chocolate has changed. The modern sense of chocolate IS an invention of Europeans. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Well, I think "chocolate" as a word is used differently. In Europe it indeed firstly refer to the hard bars, but I do believe "chocolate" may have the meaning of liquid chocolate in Latin America. I had a discussion with someone about 'chocolate' once, and in the end it turned out we were talking about different things (he was [Latin] American).
There is, however, a point when innovation become an invention. Take chocolate, the innovation led to the invention of modern chocolate - that is chocolate as a sweet not a spice. The meaning of chocolate has changed. The modern sense of chocolate IS an invention of Europeans. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Well, I think "chocolate" as a word is used differently. In Europe it indeed firstly refer to the hard bars, but I do believe "chocolate" may have the meaning of liquid chocolate in Latin America. I had a discussion with someone about 'chocolate' once, and in the end it turned out we were talking about different things (he was [Latin] American).
Agreed. In Spanish or at least in Latin America, chocolate is the substance and also the drink, and not just the solid bar.
By the way, some posts ago someone said that Cacao was invented in Jamaica . Cacao comes from Ka-ka-wa, the mayan name for chocolate drink.
The process of chocolate from the seeds to the drink was developed in the Americas, so it is very strange for us, Latinos, that Europeans say the invented it ... And we are not thinking in chocolate-bars that are seen by us just like an innovation on a basic technique.
There is, however, a point when innovation become an invention. Take chocolate, the innovation led to the invention of modern chocolate - that is chocolate as a sweet not a spice. The meaning of chocolate has changed. The modern sense of chocolate IS an invention of Europeans. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Well, I think "chocolate" as a word is used differently. In Europe it indeed firstly refer to the hard bars, but I do believe "chocolate" may have the meaning of liquid chocolate in Latin America. I had a discussion with someone about 'chocolate' once, and in the end it turned out we were talking about different things (he was [Latin] American).
Agreed. In Spanish or at least in Latin America, chocolate is the substance and also the drink, and not just the solid bar.
By the way, some posts ago someone said that Cacao was invented in Jamaica . Cacao comes from Ka-ka-wa, the mayan name for chocolate drink.
It's been obvious for some time that your reading ability was limited: that you think someone said that is further evidence of it. What may have been invented in Jamaica, but was certainly invented by Europeans, (which is what I in fact wrote) was the sweet drink called 'chocolate'. The situation was that the Caribbean merchants had all these cocoa beans lying around, which the native Indians used to make a bitter, spiced drink that no-one else would touch with a bargepole, and were faced with the problem of how to make money out of it.
What it occurred to someone to do was sweeten the drink with sugar (which pre-Columbus wasn't available in the Americas, at least not in easily extractable form) and then pour boiling milk on it. Bingo! and you have the 17th century equivalent of a Coke fad. That's generally assumed to have happened in Jamaica in the late 17th century.
1672 While Daniel Peter is given credit for inventing milk chocolate 200 years from now, but according to the International Cocoa Organization, in 1672 Sir Hans Sloane details in the American Physician a medicinal recipe using milk in drinking chocolate. Sir Hans Sloane brings a cacao tree specimen back from Jamaica to England in 1689. During his time in Jamaica he becomes interested in the bitter drink Jamaicans make by boiling roasted beans from a local tree in water. He believes it to have therapeutic properties but because the taste is unpalatable, he boils the beans in milk and sugar, creating the first milk chocolate drink—“hot cocoa.” He brings his recipe back to England and sells it to an apothecary who markets the product as “Sir Hans Sloane’s milk chocolate.”
The process of chocolate from the seeds to the drink was developed in the Americas, so it is very strange for us, Latinos, that Europeans say the invented it ... And we are not thinking in chocolate-bars that are seen by us just like an innovation on a basic technique.
Well I went to some lengths to agree it was invented in the Americas. By a European.
Before Sloane, people, even if they added sugar, used water instead of milk. Yecch!
PS. By the way this is an English-language forum. We're talking therefore of chocolate in the English-language sense (which is pretty much the same in any other language too).
.... While Daniel Peter is given credit for inventing milk chocolate 200 years from now, but according to the International Cocoa Organization, in 1672 Sir Hans Sloane details in the American Physician a medicinal recipe using milk in drinking chocolate. Sir Hans Sloane brings a cacao tree specimen back from Jamaica to England in 1689. During his time in Jamaica he becomes interested in the bitter drink Jamaicans make by boiling roasted beans from a local tree in water. He believes it to have therapeutic properties but because the taste is unpalatable, he boils the beans in milk and sugar, creating the first milk chocolate drink—“hot cocoa.” He brings his recipe back to England and sells it to an apothecary who markets the product as “Sir Hans Sloane’s milk chocolate.” ...
Well I went to some lengths to agree it was invented in the Americas. By a European.
Before Sloane, people, even if they added sugar, used water instead of milk. Yecch!
Don't be silly. Your eurocentrism don't allow you to see. Chocolate was drink by Cortes and Moctezuma. The rest is just attributing things to people that doesn't deserve the merit.
However, it is very clear that you want to erase any foreingn influences into Europe, so you will never admit that.
.... While Daniel Peter is given credit for inventing milk chocolate 200 years from now, but according to the International Cocoa Organization, in 1672 Sir Hans Sloane details in the American Physician a medicinal recipe using milk in drinking chocolate. Sir Hans Sloane brings a cacao tree specimen back from Jamaica to England in 1689. During his time in Jamaica he becomes interested in the bitter drink Jamaicans make by boiling roasted beans from a local tree in water. He believes it to have therapeutic properties but because the taste is unpalatable, he boils the beans in milk and sugar, creating the first milk chocolate drink—“hot cocoa.” He brings his recipe back to England and sells it to an apothecary who markets the product as “Sir Hans Sloane’s milk chocolate.” ...
Well I went to some lengths to agree it was invented in the Americas. By a European.
Before Sloane, people, even if they added sugar, used water instead of milk. Yecch!
Don't be silly. Your eurocentrism don't allow you to see. Chocolate was drink by Cortes and Moctezuma.
But that drink was boiled in water and unsugared. Not chocolate (though made from cocoa beans).
The average five-year-old will soon tell you the difference, even if you can't. (Water is what comes out of the river or falls as rain, milk is what you get from female mammals. Nutrition 101.)
The rest is just attributing things to people that doesn't deserve the merit.
However, it is very clear that you want to erase any foreingn influences into Europe, so you will never admit that.
Don't be daft. I've accepted all sorts of foreign influences on Europe. Just as an example off the top of my head, take the Japanese colour palette that so strongly influences the impressionists. Or the African masks that influenced some of Picasso's work. Or the catamaran that came from Oceania. Or - perhaps above all - take the Christian religion which came from Palestine. Or all the stuff that everyone agrees came from India and China, including their philosophies and religions.
But in each case it is necessary to look at what actually happened not just rely on political prejudice and dogma.
PS: It wouldn't, of course, surprise me or anyone else if in your book all these were actually first invented by Amerindians.
But that drink was boiled in water and unsugared. Not chocolate (though made from cocoa beans).
The average five-year-old will soon tell you the difference, even if you can't. (Water is what comes out of the river or falls as rain, milk is what you get from female mammals. Nutrition 101.)
A five years old would know that that drink boiled in water and unsugared WAS and IS chocolate.
Pinguin, don't be foolish; a five year old here in the US would not recognize the unsugared boiled water drink as chocolate (in the US sense of the word). A five year old, unless they have tasted baker's chocolate - which is a bitter dark chocolate - that five year old would only identify the sweetened drink as chocolate.
But that drink was boiled in water and unsugared. Not chocolate (though made from cocoa beans).
The average five-year-old will soon tell you the difference, even if you can't. (Water is what comes out of the river or falls as rain, milk is what you get from female mammals. Nutrition 101.)
A five years old would know that that drink boiled in water and unsugared WAS and IS chocolate.
Your ignorance on purpose is really amazing.
the point has been made before and i will reiterate and expand it anyway.
Chocolate as we know it is not the drink you describe, even the cocoa powder we use to drink with milk is different (cocoa butter being removed) something agian that was a European development that was a important step to the solid bar. The Native american drink never suited our palate. You have to respect the language of the forum and its users, you cannot re-jigg our languge and its meaning to fit your views.
Any 5 year old in the anglophone world understand chocolate as confectionery. In Hispanic this may be different, you may need to qualify it as 'American' or something, you tell me. Likewise if anyone using the English language was talking about that native american drink we would in fact not call it chocolate. Certainly it would need additional descriptives for the reader to understand the difference. No suprises here though, as it never became mainstream until it was made sweet and produced in that solid state by machines, that is the chocolate we know and consume.
But that drink was boiled in water and unsugared. Not chocolate (though made from cocoa beans).
The average five-year-old will soon tell you the difference, even if you can't. (Water is what comes out of the river or falls as rain, milk is what you get from female mammals. Nutrition 101.)
A five years old would know that that drink boiled in water and unsugared WAS and IS chocolate.
How would they know that? I'm talking about a five-year-old - indeed an infant - who never tasted it before and never even heard the word 'chocolate' before.
Sweet milky chocolate immediately appeals to the human palate. The bitter, unsweetened, watery stuff is at best an acquired taste, and not many people acquire it. Even modern 'dark' chocolate is generally rejected by children in favour of milk chocolate(or white chocolate come the that) .
Your ignorance on purpose is really amazing.
At least I know what children pester you to buy in shops. And it isn't xocolatl.
As far as I know, (my wife happens to be a raw chocolate maker, yumm!) the sugar and milk only became necessary because the cacao beans had to be roasted in order to last long and be mass-produced, which basically burns all the nutrition and sweetness out of them and make them taste very bitter (like burnt food basically). Native Americans such as the Mayans used the cacao fruit raw and never roasted them. Raw cacao actually tastes as creamy/chocolaty as, or to be honest even better than, the nasty burnt stuff which are sweetened and made eatable by all sorts of junk such as the white sugar, or (homogenised) milk (to which many people are intolerant in adulthood).
So as Pinguin says here, to a child, raw cacao drink (which the native Americans used to drink) would taste as good and creamy, or even better than the modern milky sugary burnt stuff.
At the moment in Europe (especially in Britain) and the US (especially in California) the raw chocolate is emerging, and the children actually love the sugar/milk-free raw chocolates.
Nevertheless, as Leonidas has already written, separating the fat from the fruit in the form of butter, which as a result lead to the solid chocolate bars, was done by Europeans.
Oh Luther thing, It is ottomans helped him. I am not sure how can luther made reform, If Ottomans did not weak central europea and helped protestans with money. Or maybe, Ottomans just made it more easy for luther.
As far as I know, (my wife happens to be a raw chocolate maker, yumm!) the sugar and milk only became necessary because the cacao beans had to be roasted in order to last long and be mass-produced, which basically burns all the nutrition and sweetness out of them and make them taste very bitter (like burnt food basically). Native Americans such as the Mayans used the cacao fruit raw and never roasted them. Raw cacao actually tastes as creamy/chocolaty as, or to be honest even better than, the nasty burnt stuff which are sweetened and made eatable by all sorts of junk such as the white sugar, or (homogenised) milk (to which many people are intolerant in adulthood). So as Pinguin says here, to a child, raw cacao drink (which the native Americans used to drink) would taste as good and creamy, or even better than the modern milky sugary burnt stuff. At the moment in Europe (especially in Britain) and the US (especially in California) the raw chocolate is emerging, and the children actually love the sugar/milk-free raw chocolates.
Nevertheless, as Leonidas has already written, separating the fat from the fruit in the form of butter, which as a result lead to the solid chocolate bars, was done by Europeans.
I'd be interested in a link to a site that supported this that wasn't engaged in selling the stuff. In all the histories I've seen, xocotatl was made from boiling roasted beans.
Cacao only ripens once a year, no? How could they get a year-round drink from just the raw beans, if, as you say, they have to be 'roasted' to be kept? This is how wikipedia describes the production process for the beans:
The harvested pods are opened with a machete, the pulp and cocoa seeds are removed and the rind is discarded. The pulp and seeds are then piled in heaps, placed in bins, or laid out on grates for several days. During this time, the seeds and pulp undergo "sweating", where the thick pulp liquefies as it ferments. The fermented pulp trickles away, leaving cocoa seeds behind to be collected. Sweating is important for the quality of the beans, which originally have a strong bitter taste. If sweating is interrupted, the resulting cocoa may be ruined; if underdone the cocoa seed maintains a flavor similar to raw potatoes and becomes susceptible to mildew.
Some cocoa producing countries distill alcoholic spirits using the liquefied pulp.
The fermented beans are dried by spreading them out over a large surface and constantly raking them. In large plantations, this is done on huge trays under the sun or by using artificial heat. Small plantations may dry their harvest on little trays or on cowhides. Finally, the beans are trodden and shuffled about (often using bare human feet) and sometimes, during this process, red clay mixed with water is sprinkled over the beans to obtain a finer color, polish, and protection against molds during shipment to factories in the United States, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and other countries. Drying in the sun is preferable to drying by artificial means, as no extraneous flavors such as smoke or oil are introduced which might otherwise taint the flavor.
Note: " Sweating is important for the quality of the beans, which originally have a strong bitter taste."
Pinguin, don't be foolish; a five year old here in the US would not recognize the unsugared boiled water drink as chocolate (in the US sense of the word). A five year old, unless they have tasted baker's chocolate - which is a bitter dark chocolate - that five year old would only identify the sweetened drink as chocolate.
Foolish is to try to claim chocolate for Europe. More than foolish, that simply robbing a patent.
As far as I know, (my wife happens to be a raw chocolate maker, yumm!) the sugar and milk only became necessary because the cacao beans had to be roasted in order to last long and be mass-produced, which basically burns all the nutrition and sweetness out of them and make them taste very bitter (like burnt food basically). Native Americans such as the Mayans used the cacao fruit raw and never roasted them.
.
That's false. They roasted it! Unfortunatelly, Omshanti, that affirmation is increasing the idea that Amerindians were idiots. They actually developed all the process of chocolate, with the except the adition of milk, because they lacked animal milk in the Americas. They eat chocolate with aditives such as pepper, vanilla and honey (thay they knew).
Originally posted by omshanti
Raw cacao actually tastes as creamy/chocolaty as, or to be honest even better than, the nasty burnt stuff which are sweetened and made eatable by all sorts of junk such as the white sugar, or (homogenised) milk (to which many people are intolerant in adulthood). So as Pinguin says here, to a child, raw cacao drink (which the native Americans used to drink) would taste as good and creamy, or even better than the modern milky sugary burnt stuff. At the moment in Europe (especially in Britain) and the US (especially in California) the raw chocolate is emerging, and the children actually love the sugar/milk-free raw chocolates.
Nevertheless, as Leonidas has already written, separating the fat from the fruit in the form of butter, which as a result lead to the solid chocolate bars, was done by Europeans.
Yes, Chocolate-bars were developed by Europeans, but chocolate was developed by Amerindians of Mesoamerica.
Actually, ancient Maya chocolate was found in a teapot and analyzed. These are the results
This is a maya chocolate pot, that say "kakawa" (chocolate) in the pot
Analysis of residue from a ceramic "teapot" suggests that the Maya, and their ancestors, may have been gobbling chocolate as far back as 2,600 years ago, pushing back the earliest evidence of cacao use more than 1,000 years.
"This reopens the whole debate about who first invented chocolate," said Jonathan Haas, curator of the mouthwatering "Chocolate" exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago.
The first chemical evidence of cacao use came about 15 years ago after the analysis of residue from a vessel found at the Mayan site of Rio Azul in northeastern Guatemala and belonging to the Early Classic period of Maya culture—approximately A.D. 460. But Michael Coe, co-author of The True History of Chocolate, believes based on a slew of evidence, some linguistic, that the roots of chocolate go much further back to the great Olmec civilization, which preceded the Maya.
"The Maya derived a lot of their high culture from the Olmec," said Coe, also professor emeritus of anthropology at Yale. "Even the word 'cacao' is not a native Maya word—it's Olmec." The Olmec lived in the southern Gulf of Mexico between 1500 and 500 B.C., and their influence extended to Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, and El Salvador.
"The new find is hard chemical evidence that the Mayans were drinking chocolate in 500 B.C.," said Coe, suggesting that people were cultivating the cacao tree long before the Maya civilization, which flourished in southern Mexico, the Yucatán, and the highlands of Belize between 500 B.C. and A.D. 1500.
Chocolate is made from the seeds of the cacao tree, which are swaddled in gooey white flesh inside green-yellow pods. The seeds and the pulp are scooped out of the pod and allowed to ferment until the seeds are a rich dark brown. The seeds are then dried, and then roasted before being ground to produce a thick chocolate paste.
Chocolate for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
The Maya had a lifestyle many kids would envy—chocolate at every meal. "It was the beverage of everyday people and also the food of the rulers and gods," said Haas. In fact, the scientific name for the cacao tree is Theobroma cacao—"food of the gods." Hieroglyphs that depict chocolate being poured for rulers and gods are present on Maya murals and ceramics.
Now the newly-analyzed spouted ceramic pot reveals the deeper darker history of this almost drug-like substance.
Mayan teapots have always fascinated Terry Powis, an archaeologist at the University of Texas at Austin, which is how his investigation began. "Spouted vessels are very distinct from other Mayan ceramics and quite rare, typically associated with elite burials," he explained.
Fortunately for Powis, fourteen such vessels were excavated in 1981 from a site at Colha, which lies close to the Caribbean coast in northern Belize, and have since been housed at the University of Texas, Austin. The Maya occupied Colha, which is known for its production of stone tools and its Preclassic spouted vessels, continuously from about 900 B.C. to A.D. 1300.
The Essence of Chocolate
Powis's goal was to determine whether the vessels were indeed used to pour some type of chocolate libation.
He scraped residue from the vessels and sent the samples to W. Jeffrey Hurst, who has a delicious job as an analytical biochemist at the Hershey Foods Technical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Using "high performance liquid chromatography coupled to atmospheric-pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry," Hurst analyzed all the samples. The first instrument separates all the components of the mixture and the other measures the molecular weight of each. Cacao is a blend of more than 500 chemical compounds. Of this tasty compendium the signature chemical is a compound called theobromine—the chemical marker of cacao.
Of the 14 samples analyzed, 3 were positive for theobromine, "chocolate, that is," said Powis. The study is published in the July 18 issue of the journal Nature.
These spouted vessels were first dubbed chocolate pots about 100 years ago. Archaeologists knew from Spanish accounts that the Maya drank liquid chocolate and just assumed that the teapots were used to pour the beverage. "Now we have proof," said Powis.
Chilli, Honey and Maize With Your Chocolate?
By the time the Spanish reached the Maya, around the 1500s, everyone was drinking chocolate—rich and poor alike. Traces of chocolate have been found in ordinary Maya houses.
The Maya drink was very different from America's thin, watery hot chocolate, said Powis. According to Spanish accounts—many of which come from Bishop Diego de Landa, whose descriptions of Maya culture and language are the primary tools used today to translate Maya glyphs—the Maya enjoyed their hot chocolate thick and foamy.
While standing, Maya poured the chocolate drink from one vessel to another on the ground. The drop, together with the fatty cacao butter, produced a thick head of rich, dark, chocolate foam—the most coveted part of the drink.
Chemical analysis of these vessels is now becoming a standard tool in archaeology. As long as they're not washed, they can be analyzed for ancient residues. Powis hopes to use the same type of studies to reveal the other ingredients used in the chocolate drinks. From Spanish records, Mayanists already know that the chocolate was mixed with maize, water, honey, or chilli. But what other secret ingredients are discovered will be a sweet surprise.
You overlook the whole point about 'chocolate', which is whether the word can properly be applied to xocotatl. That something is made from cocoa beans is not enough to make it chocolate - in fact even with milk and sugar it could still be cocoa. http://www.cadbury.co.uk/EN/CTB2003/about_chocolate/history_cadbury/key_events/
As far as I know, (my wife happens to be a raw chocolate maker, yumm!) the sugar and milk only became necessary because the cacao beans had to be roasted in order to last long and be mass-produced, which basically burns all the nutrition and sweetness out of them and make them taste very bitter (like burnt food basically). Native Americans such as the Mayans used the cacao fruit raw and never roasted them. Raw cacao actually tastes as creamy/chocolaty as, or to be honest even better than, the nasty burnt stuff which are sweetened and made eatable by all sorts of junk such as the white sugar, or (homogenised) milk (to which many people are intolerant in adulthood). So as Pinguin says here, to a child, raw cacao drink (which the native Americans used to drink) would taste as good and creamy, or even better than the modern milky sugary burnt stuff. At the moment in Europe (especially in Britain) and the US (especially in California) the raw chocolate is emerging, and the children actually love the sugar/milk-free raw chocolates. Nevertheless, as Leonidas has already written, separating the fat from the fruit in the form of butter, which as a result lead to the solid chocolate bars, was done by Europeans.
I'd be interested in a link to a site that supported this that wasn't engaged in selling the stuff. In all the histories I've seen, xocotatl was made from boiling roasted beans.
I will put links to videos from both main stream and alternative perspectives, so you can decide for yourself.
Main stream chocolate video
No, it flowers and fruits all year long, new fruits always replacing the ripen old fruits. The fruits ripen up to 3~4 times a year.
Originally posted by gcle2003
How could they get a year-round drink from just the raw beans, if, as you say, they have to be 'roasted' to be kept?
Ok, that (it was roasted to last long) was what I wrote off the top of my head. I went and spoke to a friend who is a professional chocolate maker today. The native Americans fermented it naturally under the sun until the right moment (like wine, the longer the better) which is a minimum of 4 weeks. Commercial chocolate production could not wait minimum of 4 weeks because it takes too long and requires too much effort for mass production, therefore they developed a way to fast ferment them artificially at a high heat in sheds, which as a by-product produces too much alcohol, which in turn has to be burnt off by roasting. In order to mask this fast/poorly fermented and burnt product eatable, white sugar, products for alkalization and milk were added, all of which conceal astringency and the absence of real chocolate flavor.
Originally posted by gcle2003
This is how wikipedia describes the production process for the beans:
The harvested pods are opened with a [COLOR=#0000ff">machete[/COLOR">, the pulp and cocoa seeds are removed and the rind is discarded. The pulp and seeds are then piled in heaps, placed in bins, or laid out on grates for several days. During this time, the seeds and pulp undergo "sweating", where the thick pulp liquefies as it ferments. The fermented pulp trickles away, leaving cocoa seeds behind to be collected. Sweating is important for the quality of the beans, which originally have a strong bitter taste. If sweating is interrupted, the resulting cocoa may be ruined; if underdone the cocoa seed maintains a flavor similar to raw [COLOR=#810081">potatoes[/COLOR"> and becomes susceptible to [COLOR=#0000ff">mildew[/COLOR">.
Note: " Sweating is important for the quality of the beans, which originally have a strong bitter taste."
Note: Fermented naturally under the sun at a low temperature is considered raw.
I would recommend you to taste the difference between the raw cacao nibs and the usual coco powder sold in the super markets.
Originally posted by pinguin
Originally posted by omshanti
As far as I know, (my wife happens to be a raw chocolate maker, yumm!) the sugar and milk only became necessary because the cacao beans had to be roasted in order to last long and be mass-produced, which basically burns all the nutrition and sweetness out of them and make them taste very bitter (like burnt food basically). Native Americans such as the Mayans used the cacao fruit raw and never roasted them.
.
That's false. They roasted it! Unfortunatelly, Omshanti, that affirmation is increasing the idea that Amerindians were idiots. They actually developed all the process of chocolate, with the except the adition of milk, because they lacked animal milk in the Americas. They eat chocolate with aditives such as pepper, vanilla and honey (thay they knew).
They didn't need to roast them. The idiots in my opinion are the ones who roast the beans and destroy a perfect food called the ''food of the gods'' (Theobroma).
Originally posted by pinguin
Originally posted by omshanti
Raw cacao actually tastes as creamy/chocolaty as, or to be honest even better than, the nasty burnt stuff which are sweetened and made eatable by all sorts of junk such as the white sugar, or (homogenised) milk (to which many people are intolerant in adulthood). So as Pinguin says here, to a child, raw cacao drink (which the native Americans used to drink) would taste as good and creamy, or even better than the modern milky sugary burnt stuff. At the moment in Europe (especially in Britain) and the US (especially in California) the raw chocolate is emerging, and the children actually love the sugar/milk-free raw chocolates. Nevertheless, as Leonidas has already written, separating the fat from the fruit in the form of butter, which as a result lead to the solid chocolate bars, was done by Europeans.
Yes, Chocolate-bars were developed by Europeans, but chocolate was developed by Amerindians of Mesoamerica.
Yes, chocolate was developed by the Amerindians. Let me quote for you what the professional chocolate maker said to me today. ''the natives did it the right way, the way it was supposed to be done.''
Pinguin, don't be foolish; a five year old here in the US would not recognize the unsugared boiled water drink as chocolate (in the US sense of the word). A five year old, unless they have tasted baker's chocolate - which is a bitter dark chocolate - that five year old would only identify the sweetened drink as chocolate.
Foolish is to try to claim chocolate for Europe. More than foolish, that simply robbing a patent.
If you are not going to directly address what I say in a post don't quote me. Where in the above quoted post did I claim chocolate for Europe? Did Amerindians use milk and sugar as sweeteners? Nobody is stealing a patent here, your opponents are merely trying to point out that "chocolate" in the modern anglophonic sense is a European innovation. This innovation includes/included the patenting of NEW methods of production and ultimately a different product. What is so wrong with saying this? Don't be foolish in confusing innovation and invention. At times innovation leads to new inventions; understand that inventions can be processes not just products.
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Topic: Foreign Influences on Europe.
. Cacao comes from Ka-ka-wa, the mayan name for chocolate drink.
... And we are not thinking in chocolate-bars that are seen by us just like an innovation on a basic technique.
