History of Hot Chocolate

A lot of people during the winter have a cup of hot chocolate after playing in the snow, now maybe you made it by dumping a packet (or 5) of hot chocolate powder in a cup with hot water then mixing it. It may surprise you, but hot chocolate has a long history. That starts way back in 500 BC when it was made by the Mayans in Mexico. Now you’re probably thinking, “But that place is always hot!” Why would they want hot chocolate? Well, it was served cold and made up of chile peppers, water,ground-up cocoa beans, and cornmeal, as well as other ingredients. You may have realized that I didn’t say sugar. That's because it was known as “the bitter drink” and there wasn't any sugar, they may have used a natural sweetener like honey or vanilla but that's it.

Hot chocolate made its way to Europe in the early 1500s when the explorer Cortez brought cocoa beans and the tools to make hot chocolate along. It was still bitter and served cold but it became popular and was adopted by the court of King Charles V. It also became very popular in the Spanish upper class. After it was introduced to Spain they began to change it and serve it hot, sweetened and chile peppers weren’t added. They were very protective of this new drink and kept it a secret. so it took a long time to reach and spread across Europe. Then London in 1700 created chocolate houses, which is technically a coffee shop but with hot chocolate. They were popular even though hot chocolate had become more expensive. Hans Sloane brought the recipe for mixing it with milk. And other places started adding milk.

Hot chocolate used to be prescribed to treat stomach and liver diseases. The hot chocolate from the packets is quite thin and not as thick( unless you add 5 packets) but there are other countries with their own version of hot cocoa that is thicker than our powder type. Now you can also get it out of a coffee vending machine. The powder was developed Around the 18th century. Milk chocolate was invented in 1869 and was made by mixing cocoa butter with sugar.