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Cacao/Chocolate (Introduction to Europe)
Cacao trees and chocolate spread to Europe via Spanish colonial networks from the sixteenth century as a court and elite luxury, and early seventeent…
Timeline
- c. 1520–1550New Spain and Spain · SpainSpanish colonists brought cacao beans from the New World, used Aztec-style hot drink recipes in Mexico and elsewhere, and shipped them to the Iberian Peninsula, where they became a courtly novelty.
- c. 1600–1650Courts of Spain, France, and Italy · FranceIn the early seventeenth century chocolate spread among European nobility as a hot drink sweetened with sugar and spices; Spain maintained an import monopoly while France and other states gradually adopted cacao consumption culture through marriage and trade.
- c. 1650–1800Western European ports and chocolate houses · EnglandDutch and British merchants broke the Spanish monopoly and cacao trade expanded; European recipes gradually reduced chili and added milk and sugar, as chocolate moved from courtly treasure to urban chocolate houses and broader social strata.
Sources
- Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate — Sophie D. Coe; Michael D. Coe (2013)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: History of chocolate https://www.britannica.com/topic/chocolate