Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

HISTORY OF COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 17 head of the larger tree to accomplish this, as is shown in the illustration. This seems incredible, yet Benzoni was an honest man and a careful observer. The method of preparing the drink was naturally primitive. The beans were dried in the sun, and then roasted in an earthen pot. The shells of the beans were then removed and the beans ground in the following männer : the cacao was placed on a flat or concave stone, and another stone, shaped like a rolling pin, was rubbed to and fro upon it. The Mexicans used the same kind of stones for grinding maize.1 The liquid or paste so obtained, mixed with spices, was kneaded into cakes with the hånds and allowed to solidify. A piece of one of these cakes was triturated and mixed into a froth with water with a special stirrer or whisk, a kind of combined. grinder and swizzle stick, called a molinet. This was presumably a Mexican invention, as it is always exhibited in the old pictures of Mexicans. Honest old Benzoni says that at first, much to the natives’ amuse-ment, he refused to taste this drink, considering it “ more suitable for pigs than for men.” “ But,” he adds, “ subsequently, wine failing, and unwilling to drink nothing but water, I did as others did. The flavour is somewhat bitter, but it satisfies and refreshes the body without intoxicating. The Indians esteem it above everything, wherever they are accustomed to it.” The Indians (as Columbus called the natives of tropical America, thinking it was another part of India) were the first to esteem chocolate, and then the Spanish began to value it highly. It will be explained how, in 1 Hence possibly the curious error in Van Hall’s well-known book on Cacao, in which the reproduction of the illustration from Benzoni's book, showing the method of making breadfrom maize, is entitled “ Indians roasting and kneading cocoa.”