So, here is the piece that appeared in Flourish. Part of the 'In Praise Of ' series of food articles...........
In Praise of the Sun Bean
Rebecca Commons takes a journey back to the time of the ancient Toltecs and discovers why this little bean was revered as much then as it is now.
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It‘s wonderful how man discovers certain things by chance, and then works and improves it until it is firmly established within a society. The Toltecs, who lived in Mexico several thousand years ago, were familiar with the broad crown like trees that grew in their forests, producing blossom, leaf and fruit simultaneously. When the pods were ripe, they would burst open to reveal attractive bright pebble shaped beans. A local inhabitant out on a foraging trip might have bent down to look at them wondering if they could be eaten ~ they would have been hard but aromatic ~ he might have tried crushing them to make them easier to digest, and because of their high fat content, the paste he was left with would have been bitter but delicious. It seems to be a quirk of mankind that if something tastes good, it attracts attention and then effort is devoted to it. The Toltecs named their discovery ‘sun beans’, and their diet and presumably their happiness were now all the richer This was the original Cacao, which has grown since time immemorial in the tropical forests of the Americas.
Our word for chocolate comes from the Aztecs, who conquered the Toltecs in 1325. They discovered that ‘cacahuatl’, which was the name they gave to the sun beans, tasted mellower if left to ferment in the steamy heat of the forest floor. Rinsed and ground into a paste, here was the first ever step in the processing of cocoa as a popular food.
At various times throughout history, cocoa beans have been used as currency by the Mayans and Mexicans, but always the enduring attraction has been as a luxury food and later in the court of Montezuma, as a drink. This he supped surrounded by great pomp and ceremony and from weighty solid gold goblets ~ naturally!
Chocolate’s constant appearance, reinvention and adoration through the ages is as diverse and exuberant as the product itself. Several of the world’s supercentenarians have been passionately fond of chocolate. Jeanne Calment died in 1997 having habitually eaten around four kilos of dark chocolate a week, she was 122! It’s been used as important bribes between rival countries to promote peace. It’s been used as a focus for political resolutions, and as a status symbol to categorize and differentiate people. The innocent sun bean has even been included in royal dowries to win the most discerning husband! In fact, in 1660, when Maria Theresa of Spain came to marry Louis X1V, the Sun King, of France, she arrived with a servant whose sole function was to prepare her favourite chocolate drink. What luxury!
When you open a box of cocoa, close your eyes and recognise that unmistakable aroma ~ a gift from the New World to the Old World. Nothing was or is as mild and smooth as cocoa or chocolate, and yet its slight hint of bitterness is a superb finishing flourish.
‘Brown Gold’ is the name given to the product processed from those sun beans. Just as it takes painstaking effort to mine gold from the depths of the earth, for us to admire and enjoy, so it takes great industriousness to extract the brown essence from each bean. The prize, of course, is chocolate of the highest quality.
Chocolate is a confection to exult in! In recent years much has been made of its beneficial properties, firmly establishing it as an invitation to celebrate life. Food writer Donna Hay, sums it up with alacrity: " While chocolate may not exactly be able to solve all the world’s problems, I firmly believe that quantities of the almost mythological substance could have a profound impact on many a dicey international situation……,
so please indulge, and do your bit for world peace!’
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