The Theobroma cocao tree, from whence derives chocolate, is a native of Latin America, and the Mayans were the first to cultivate it. The word chocolate could be a corruption of the Mayan word xocolatl, which means bitter water, for they used to make an unsweetened drink of toasted pounded cocoa beans mixed with corn flour and spices. Or it could be from the Mayan words choco (foam) and atl (water), for cocoa symbolized fertility for the Mayans, and their wedding rituals included sharing a frothy cocoa-based drink. Aztec legends say that the god Quetzalcoatl descended to earth on a beam of the Morning Star with a cacao tree and taught their people how to use the beans to make a drink which would bring wisdom and knowledge. The Aztec elite thought the bitter drink was an aphrodisiac, and Montezuma, so the story goes, downed 50 golden goblets of it every day. Cocoa beans were used for currency in the Mayan and Aztec empires, and figured in these people's gorgeous carved stone art.
Europeans learned about cocoa from the Aztecs, though when Christopher Columbus first brought samples of the bean back to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain, it was ignored in favour of other treasures. Hernando Cortez, who was given the drink by Montezuma around 1519, brought the bean back to Europe, where the recipe was adapted to the European palate with the addition of sugar, vanilla, wine, and spices. Cocoa was secretly processed in Spanish monasteries, using produce from overseas plantations, for almost a century. When the chocolate craze began to sweep France and much of the rest of Europe by the 17th century, however, the secret of its origins eventually became public. In the 17th century people began adding chocolate to cakes and rolls; in the 18th century the naturalist Carolus Linnaeus gave the plant the name Theobroma, Greek for "food of the gods". Chocolate had become a very popular food, as it remains today, and it is now grown all over the tropical world: Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and Hawaii. The Ivory Coast and Brazil are the world's top cocoa producers today; Ghana, once the premier producer, has been suffering from aging plantations.
How do those weird orange fruits, the size and shape of small papayas, become chocolate? They are fermented, dried, roasted, and cracked, revealing the cocoa beans inside, which are then chopped into small pieces called nibs. The nibs are then ground to extract cocoa butter, a natural fat, and a dark paste called chocolate liquor, which contains cocoa butter and cocoa solids. If even more cocoa butter is removed, a hard mass results, which is dried and ground to make unsweetened cocoa powder. Richer, darker Dutch process cocoa powder is treated with an alkali to neutralize cocoa's acidity. The final step for chocolate liquor on its way to becoming chocolate is conching, which removes residual moisture and volatile acids by running the liquid through huge rotating blades; the process continues for 12 to 72 hours, depending on the quality of chocolate required. During conching, cocoa butter - and sometimes the emulsifier lecithin - is added to make the texture smooth.
There are a number of kinds of chocolate on the market, and standards vary: chocolates labelled bittersweet or semisweet can vary widely in sweetness, amount of cocoa butter, and amount of chocolate liquor. The chocolate liquor is the ingredient which gives that rich, chocolatey flavour, and higher quality chocolate will contain more of this elixir. Cocoa butter imparts a smooth creamy mouth feel and attractive sheen.
Unsweetened, or baking or bitter chocolate usually has between 50 and 60% cocoa butter plus cocoa solids.
Bittersweet usually contains at least 35% chocolate liquor, semisweet and sweet from 15 to 35% chocolate liquor; all 3 contain varying amounts of cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, and vanilla. Milk chocolate contains only about 10% chocolate liquor, plus milk solids. The high quality couverture (French for coating or covering) contains high proportions of cocoa butter and chocolate liquor, and is used by confectioners to envelope candies and mold shapes. White chocolate is made from cocoa butter but contains no chocolate liquor, and thus is not, strictly speaking, chocolate at all. In Latin American markets you may find Mexican chocolate, a semisweet, grainy variation flavoured with cinnamon, almonds and vanilla. It's used for hot chocolate and the complex mole sauce. Substitute 1 oz (30 gr) semisweet chocolate, 1/2 tsp (2-1/2 ml) ground cinnamon and 1 drop almond extract for 1 oz Mexican chocolate.
Besides these differences, there are variations in the quality of bean, quality of a particular year's harvest, and the duration of the refining process for various brands of chocolate. Bernard Callebaut, arguably the maker of the finest chocolate in North America, believes that in the future there will be cocoa vintages, just as there are with wines, to help consumers distinguish different qualities of chocolate. At present only the manufacturers are cognizant of the origin and quality of the beans that go into making up their chocolate.