Chocolate Reaches Europe

On his third voyage to the New World, on 15 August 1502, Columbus captured a Maya trading canoe laden with cacao beans and other produce. He may have learnt that the beans were money but he never found out that a drink was made from them.

However, when the Spaniards under Cortés invaded Yucatan and then the valley of Mexico itself, between 1517 and 1526, they soon realized the full value of the black ‘almonds’ (as they at first called them) of which so many millions were stored at Tenochtitlan. At first disgusted by the frothy, dark beverage that was present at every Aztec banquet and festival, the conquistadores soon learned to appreciate it. Rumour credited it with aphrodisiac properties (perhaps simply because it was taken in late evening, when the meal was over), and long argument would centre on the question whether chocolate was a food sufficiently nourishing to be ruled out during Lent. In contrast to the Aztec view of it as a drink for warriors, chocolate has sometimes been seen by Europeans as a woman’s drink. This may have something to do with the fact that the conquistadores were taught to like it by their Mexican wives, concubines, and domestic servants. By 1590, ‘the Spanish men—and even more the Spanish women—are addicted to it’, wrote José de Acosta of his Mexican observations.