Year 600 - Using The Bean Fourteen centuries before luxury chocolates was introduced to the market, the cocoa bean is considered the ultimate status symbol in the Mayan and Aztec cultures. They use the beans as currency and those wealthy enough to have an excess of beans use them to make a chocolate drink that gives them "wisdom and power."

Year 1502 - Money Grows On Trees

Columbus is the first European to discover cocoa beans and chocolate. But it is the Conquistadors that realize the value of "money that grows on trees." Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez writes home to tell of how he was able to purchase a slave for 100 cocoa beans. Later Hernando Cortez builds a cocoa plantation for the express purpose of growing money in the name of Spain.

Year 1519 - Falling In Love

Cortez soon discovers that Emperor Montezuma, who no doubt possesses more cocoa beans than anybody else at the time, is a "chocoholic." Montezuma, it is reported, drinks nothing but chocolate, particularly before entering his harem. He believes that the concoction is a powerful aphrodisiac. (It turns out that chocolate contains a natural substance that is reputed to stimulate the same reaction in the body as falling in love.)

Year 1528 - How Sweet It Is Cortez returns to Spain with cocoa beans and the tools needed to make chocolate. Not that he is particularly fond of the concoction. In fact, he is said to personally have found the drink distasteful, probably because the Aztec method of preparation called for flavoring the drink with spices,

including lots of chili. Spanish cooks quickly remedy that by changing the recipe, replacing the peppers with sugar.

Year 1606 - Spilling The Beans

Spain manages to keep the discovery of chocolate a secret for more than a century. In the meantime, the Spanish cultivate quite a trade in the popular new beverage as well as cocoa plantations in their equatorial colonies around the world. It is an Italian merchant, Antonio Carletti, who you might say "spilled the cocoa beans" and puts in motion the process that breaks the Spanish monopoly of the chocolate trade.
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Year 1657 - The Elite Meet

England's first chocolate house opens in London. It's a big hit with the upper class and soon becomes the place where the elite meet to sip. Cocoa bean prices are exorbitant and, as the Spanish historian Oviedo, notes: "none but the rich and noble could afford" to frequent such establishments. Prices eventually drop and more chocolate houses begin to appear throughout the country, challenging the primacy of coffee and tea rooms and even pubs.

Year 1671 - The Accidental Confectioner

The personal chef to the Duke of Plesslis-Praslin in France watches as a panful of burnt sugar spills over a bowlful of almonds. One taste and the Duke is decidedly pleased. He's so pleased, in fact, that he lends his name to this new confection and so, the "praslin" or "praliné" comes into being. But it took Belgian chocolatiers to perfect this particular treat. Eventually, the word praliné becomes synonymous with a particular type of Belgian confection featuring a molded shell of chocolate that is filled with creams, caramels, light ganache and, of course, praliné from which came the name of " PRALINO". Indeed, it later becomes the signature filling for Godiva chocolates.

                                  

Year 1674 - The First Bite

They're still drinking chocolate throughout Europe, but enterprising bakers in England begin adding cocoa to their cake recipes making chocolate widely available in solid form for the first time. Within decades, solid chocolate becomes available throughout Europe in a variety of forms, including bars, lifting the status of chocolate from that of a stylish drink to that of a superb, sweet delicacy.

Year 1697 - The Swiss Eat It Up

Belgium is already established as one of Europe's premier centers for the production of chocolate. When the mayor of Zurich pays a visit to Brussels, he's so taken with the taste he returns home with news of the savory concoction, the inspiration for a new Swiss industry and, no doubt, a personal supply to savor for some time to come.
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Year 1712 - America Loves It Too

By the turn of the 18th Century, chocolate makes its way back to North America. In little more than a decade, Boston apothecary shops are advertising and selling chocolate imported from Europe. Soon, Massachusetts sea captains are bringing back cargoes of cocoa beans, and the chocolate trade blossoms.

Year 1728 - The Daily Grind

Back in Europe, chocolate factories are springing up, but they use the same age-old labor intensive methods to grind and churn their products.

Year 1765 - American Ingenuity

American colonists crave chocolate and the demand prompts James Baker and John Hannon to start their own industrial revolution by building a chocolate factory that uses water power to mechanize the production process. Their company, today known as the Walter Baker Company, is one of the oldest still operating in the U.S.

Year 1772 - de Sade Has A Ball Leave it to the Marquis de Sade to rekindle the old chestnut about chocolate being a powerful aphrodisiac. He gives a ball in Marseilles and, as author Louis Petit de Bachaumont writes: "into the dessert he slipped chocolate pastilles so good that...

No one failed to eat some. It proved to be so potent that those who ate the pastilles began to burn with unchaste ardor and to carry on as if in the grip of the most amorous frenzy." The story may be apocryphal, but the infamous Marquis was arrested soon after the ball was over.

Year 1792 - The Learning Curve

The Swiss, who today consume more chocolate per capita than any other nation on earth (22 pounds compared to 11 pounds per person in the U.S.), are still trying to master the art of making chocolate. So, when the famed German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe embarks on a tour of Switzerland, he takes no chances and packs his own chocolate and chocolate pot for the journey.

Year 1815 - Dutch Treat

Dutch chemist Johannes Van Houten begins experiments that result in the discovery of a new kind of powdered chocolate with a very low fat content - what we now know as cocoa. Van Houten's patented process involves the use of alkaline salts to treat the powdered chocolate and this "Dutching," as the technique is known, improves the chocolate's ability to dissolve in warm water and makes it darker in color and milder in flavor. Van Houten also builds an hydraulic press that makes possible for the first time mass production of chocolate both in an easy-to-use powdered form and in solid form.

Year 1819 - The Swiss Get The Hang Of It

One hundred twenty two years after the mayor of Zurich brought chocolate back with him from Brussels, the Swiss develop a knack for making chocolate and Francois Louis Cailler opens the first Swiss chocolate factory on Lake Geneva. Not to be outdone, six years later Philippe Suchard builds his own machines, including the world's first chocolate mixer, and starts making his own confections.

Year 1847 - A New Taste Sensation

If J.S. Fry & Sons of Bristol, founded in 1728, is not the oldest chocolate factory in England, it certainly is its most enduring and innovative. In fact, one son, Joseph, had the ingenuity to purchase and install a steam engine in his factory in 1789 soon after Watt invented the machine. A grandson, Francis, and a great grandson, another Joseph, carry on the tradition of innovation by adopting Van Houten's process and press and discovering a way to combine cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa butter to make the first real chocolate bars.

Year 1879 - Milking The Process

Once they get started, the Swiss quickly show the world just how much they love their chocolate. They are the first to add powdered milk to the process and they refine the chocolate making art by introducing a "conching" machine that gives chocolate confections a smooth, creamy texture.

Year 1895 - Now Everybody Can Have Some

America's love affair with chocolate heats up when Milton S. Hershey sells his first Hershey Bar in Pennsylvania using modern, mass-production techniques that make the product less expensive and, thus, available for mass consumption.

Year 1926 - The Lady

Mass production of chocolate serves to create a universal appetite for the confection, in all its forms. But it also spurs a growing demand for "luxury" chocolates made with the choicest ingredients by expert chocolatiers who blend flavors and textures into formidable, one-of-a-kind taste experiences. The Draps family begins a chocolate-making "atelier" in Brussels, the city that introduced chocolates to the Swiss more than two centuries ago. Some years later, the Draps' son, Joseph, takes over the company and, at his wife's suggestion, names it after Lady Godiva whose legendary exploit made her name synonymous with grace, nobility and flair. Draps' vision is to create the world's most elegant, handcrafted chocolates for discerning consumers. <top>

Year 1984 - Pralino in Lebanon Mr. Elie Hamawi, a big admirer of chocolate, who practically lived a great part of his life tasting and enjoying chocolate from all over the world, decided to open his own factory in Lebanon using the latest technology available , giving us now the Lebanese chocolate image around the arab countries.