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| Belgian Hot Chocolate| 1440405 | UK | | 499820 | -- | | $Unspecified | -- | | | 73 | expired | |
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The Journey of the Belgian Hot Chocolate
Hot chocolate is a delicious drink that is a cocktail of cocoa powder or chocolate, sugar, and milk. This toothsome beverage can be traced back to the Mayan and Aztec civilizations in which they consumed their chocolate drinks made from roasted cocoa seeds mixed with spices like chili and achiote or annatto. The chocolate beverage was not only enjoyed but was also revered. Unfortunately, not everyone has the honor to drink chocolates during those times, only the members of the upperclass can drink it.
Chocolate was thought to be helpful in relieving exhaustion and was associated with fertility. The cocoa beans were also used by these old civilizations as currencies.
But the chocolate mixture during the old times is not as delicious as today’s. When European settlers came to the south Americas, they even found the drink a bit repulsive. Even when Christopher Columbus has returned to Europe and brought with him cocoa beans from his travels to the New World: the chocolate was still a bit ignored.
It was only the time when a certain Hernan Cortez visited Mexico in the year 1517 when chocolate is beginning to make its way to the world. Cortez then met the Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma, and was introduced to some of the emperor’s traditions and activities. One of which is his favorite beverage, the chocolate. The emperor served Cortez the chocolate drink in a goblet made of gold, which was very impressive. The chocolate of the emperor was then a mixture of powdered cocoa beans, vanilla, spices, and honey.
The “ritual” must have impressed Cortez that he brought a lot of cocoa beans back to his native Spain. He also brought with him equipments for making chocolate beverages. The Spaniards kept the recipe a secret for a long time that it was only after one hundred years that the beverage became very popular in Europe.
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