Drinking Cacao
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Recently, when I haven’t been thinking cacao, I’ve been drinking it. I’ve been steeping myself in two new beverages, cacao tea and chocolate milk. Very appropriate, this, since the practice of drinking chocolate predates the eating of same by a couple millenia! Before reporting my own beverage machinations, I’ll relate some of the interesting history I’ve drunk from my recent reading, The True History of Chocolate by Sophie & Michael Coe (thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for this!).
Theobroma cacao, the tree from which the cacao bean comes, is thought to be native to the Amazon Basin—spread throughout Central and Meso-America by early humans. We can trace the cultures that used cacao by testing ancient pottery for the presence of Theobromine, an alkaloid found in cacao. This alkaloid has been detected in delicate drinking vessels, dating to before 1400 BC, of the pre-Olmec civilization known as the “Barra”, located on the Pacific coast of Chiapas in Mexico and neighboring Guatemala. The picture at right shows another early American vessel, holding not hot chocolate, and these Cornell researchers think possibly not even the cold cacao froth popular with later American, Montezuma, but perhaps an alcoholic drink from the fermented fruit pulp of the cacao tree!
Ritualized cacao drinking among the elite classes of early American society unites the civilizations of the Olmecs, Mayans and Aztecs. Mayan pottery, such as the piece at left, dated to about 500AD, found in the tomb of an aristocrat at Mayan site, Río Azul, contains the two instances of Mayan Glyph for cacao, and has tested positive for theobromine. Another, known as ‘the Princeton Vase‘, dated to around 750 AD, depicts a woman pouring, from a height, a cacao drink from one vessel to another—the earliest depiction of this method of raising foam in drinking chocolate.
In addition to pictorial evidence, texts, such as the Popol Vuh, a Mayan creation myth, reinforce cacao as a fixture in early American culture. In particular, it references cacao as among the food stuffs found by certain gods used to create the body of man. No specific Mayan recipes for cacao based drinks survive, but it is likely that they combined ground cacao with ground Maize to make a gruel, and with any number of spices and flowers used as flavorings.
It was the Maya, at Guanaja, who introduced Europeans, through Columbus, on his fourth voyage, to cacao beans. Ol’ Chris may have brought some of these ‘almonds’ back to Spain, but they were initially disliked and forgotten. In America, the Aztec civilization both carried on the Mayan customs of drinking cacao and finally fixed cacao in the minds of Old World denizens. The Mayans may have drank cacao as both a hot and cold beverage, but the Aztecs were firmly cool imbibers. They too valued most the heady foam that could be produced by alternate pourings from distant vessels. Similar flavorings were used—Maize for lower class chocolate, for the lords, honey, peppery annatto, dried ground flowers and chilis, a prized flower known as hueinacaztli (I can’t find much info on this, besides what is repeated from the book I’m repeating from!), vanilla flowers, and spices similar to black pepper or anise. Much of what we know about the Aztec cacao rituals comes from Spanish observers, primarily the writings of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, but also from an unknown soldier of Hernán Cortés, who remarks of chocolate:
This drink is the healthiest thing, and the greatest sustenance of anything you could drink in the world, because he who drinks a cup of this liquid, no matter how far he walks, can go a whole day without eating anything else.
True enough, as anyone whose made hot chocolate made with actual bars of chocolate or ground cacao beans, rather than partially de-fatted cocoa powder, knows that it is an incredibly rich, almost syrupy thing, owing to the balance of fat and solids in the cacao bean. One must show temperance and take care not to drink large quantities at once, lord knows how Montezuma reportedly drank 50 cups of cacao per day(!), or feel regret later when walking all day, trying to work off the calories and indigestion from this energy a-bomb.
Garden Mulch or…
From the New World, cacao was eventually adopted, sweetened and loved in the Old. For some time it was primarily a food that was drunk, until the process of refining it into bars was perfected, but let us toss inhibition, return to that ancient tradition and experience different methods of imbibition. As I may have mentioned previously, the cacao husks that are winnowed from the nib are not used, due to their poor flavor and texture, in making chocolate, but either discarded, composted, or sold as mulch (ed: from linked website—Q: Why is cacao husk better than other types of mulch? A: Smells better!). Or…it can be made into tea!
I think I first heard the idea when seeing a bag of some Yogi tea advertising chocolate and cacao husks listed as an ingredient. Ha! that’s a byproduct, I thought, and…something I should try. I now see that other gourmet tea manufacturers use husk, and one, MEM tea is even partnering with Taza chocolate to use their husk.
So now after winnowing, I’ve been filtering out the big husk pieces with a wire mesh, and saving them in large bags to replace my afternoon Irish Breakfast. As would be expected from something that is purposefully removed because of its lack of flavor contribution, cacao tea is a fairly timid, mild beast. The flavor is reminiscent of chocolate, but it is not overpowering in any sense. Aroma, however, is where this tea is really interesting. It gives of a heady scent of the ‘baking brownies’ smell, that one gets when roasting cacao. Half the pleasure of drinking this tea is the inhale before the sip. I enjoy it in English style, sweetened with just milk and seek it when something light and thin is preferred, in contrast to the following cacao beverage (or meal!).
Thick Chocolate
About a month ago, I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was into espresso equipment, making coffee under proscribed rules in an attempt to perfect the cup and had made a pact with myself to someday get a lever-press espresso machine. Then, lo and behold! a beautiful 20-year old espresso machine was bestowed upon me, a gift from this friend who had recently upgraded his equipment. I’ve since been enjoying a cappuccino every morning, perfecting my milk foaming technique to make the perfect thick hot chocolate, feeling inspired by a recent resurgence in interest in ‘traditional’ hot chocolate, notably that coming from Bittersweet Cafe. Over in Oakland, they are making small cups of rich chocolate, from what I remember (it was three years ago that I went there), using an espresso grinder’s doser to measure cocoa powder into water or milk, a milkshake blender to stir and homogenize the slurry, then the steam wand of an espresso machine to heat and foam.
More recently, yesterday, I did have the chance to do more research and stopped into Chicago restaurant, Xoco, where I didn’t get a chance to sample their food, but did drink their chocolate. They are using similar equipment and processes to me to craft ‘bean-to-cup’ chocolate, again attempting to rediscover Mesoamerican past in thick chocolate blended with water and spice. Mine was thick, with jewels of fat on top to prove that their actual chocolate—ground cacao, rather than powder was the ingredient, but I did notice it lacking the characteristic head that our Aztec woman pictured near the top is taking such care to form.
I of course am questing to make this, and with my new espresso machine, all I needed was some chocolate and milk (I’m trying milk for now, taking the final plunge to water sometime in the future). In the past, I would clean the cacao grinder by first heating milk and running it in the mill, to loosen and dissolve the final residue of chocolate that is impossible to scrape out. Then I would pour out this authentic thick chocolate and finish cleaning it with hot water. Of course, I can’t drink the whole cup in one day, and so in my fridge I found some saved chocolate, milk with 100% Madagascar. I also sacrificed authenticity by adding a teaspoon of sugar, not sure that I wanted the straight bitter beverage. With the chocolate already in solution, I foamed the whole mixture with the steam wand of the espresso machine, and coming to 160F, had a nice thick head of foam.
I didn’t use any flavorings like chili or cinnamon, but this chocolate was delicious. Due to its percentage, the chocolate is available to taste, and due to the head, it was their to feel as well, this truly is hot chocolate, not just heated milk, as I sometimes think of thinner beverages. I did drink this in one sitting, and wanting to prolong the experience, even refilled half the cup with milk and foamed again. I think I found the perfect dish to make with extra 100% chocolate, and I’m looking forward to experimenting with water, spices, even smaller amounts of thicker chocolate, and maybe ditching the espresso machine altogether, finding a large vessel to go at it with my molinillo or find another and pour it between two, like apparently even Moroccans do with tea, to create something more than a drink, evocative of food, and good food this is, hot chocolate with head!
The role of prodigal blogger is not a new one for me, but the reason I’ve again been silent for a period is due to my experimentations as the prodigal son. After letting the idea ferment for years, I decided that I don’t want to return to my ancestral home for some time—I already know what that place looks like! I want travel to introduce me to new ideas and new scenery, so this winter I stuffed my backpack and set out to meet two friends in Albuquerque, walk a little and see the desert-y part of the world.
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