Customer Reviews

The True History of Chocolate

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Sophie and Michael Coe have written a emminently readable history of chocolate. They emphasize the origins of cacoa in the New World, and the Spanish conquerors' response to their "discovery" of cacoa. The story fascinates, and I liked how the authors presented all the options when historical records were scarce or contradictory. The text is interspersed with clarifying illustrations, some are in color. The 19th and 20th centuries are covered in brief. The book ends with the resurgence in deluxe chocolates that use the rarer yet better tasting cacoa beans, and explains why these chocolates are so much better tasting than the supermarket candy bar. All in all, an excellent read.

This book was an extremely readable examination of the history of chocolate, starting with the ancient MesoAmericans and ending with contemporary European and American chocolate makers. Anyone interested in the history and development of their favorite confection or beverage should read this book - it's written engagingly in the first half, and then peters out just a tad towards the end. I wished for more about the modern chocolate industry, and a little more about the current manufacturing spike in fine chocolates. But as an anthropological study revolving around the development of chocolate, I could ask for nothing more. Coe and Coe have inspired a chocolate tasting party and an academic interest in a gastrologic subject.

The bulk of the research, and most of the first three chapters of this academic book, were written by Sophie Coe before her sudden death from cancer in 1993. Her husband, Michael, undertook to complete the book as a sort of monument to his wife. It is a shame that Sophie Coe didn't write the whole book.

Michael Coe has taken a book about the history of Theobroma cacao (the chocolate plant) and turned it into an apology for the Aztecs and a bitter diatribe against Spain and, more diffusely, against Europeans in general, and against those benighted slobs who eat chocolate with less than 70% cacao. In the process, he commits many gross errors in scholarship that are severe enough that the critical reader begins to distrust him.

I developed a fascination with the Aztec and the Maya as a very young child and remember reading books about them in the very early 1970's. Even then, European and American scholars recognized that Aztec human sacrifice -- even the sacrifice of little children to Tlaloc in the cornfields -- wasn't carried out in a mood of sadistic glee, but because according to Aztec theology the gods and the sun needed blood in order to live or the universe would be destroyed. Aztec society was highly literate and they were supreme bureacrats, and they themselves documented tens of thousands of human sacrifices. They also documented the extent that royalty had to let their own blood by pulling spiked cords through their lips, and the fact that wars were carried out for the sole purpose of capturing prisoners so that priests could sacrifice them. One does not need to minimize anything about Aztec theology in order to condemn the Spaniards for dehumanizing the Aztecs. And, at that same time that the Spaniards were dehumanizing the Aztecs, they were themselves torturing people for the sake of their eternal salvation, but torturing people nevertheless. Given the choice between the tools made available to perpetrators of the Inquisition, and an obsidian blade and a heart amputation, most readers would choose the more-rapid Aztec death over the brutal and miserable slow torture at the hands of the Inquisition. No question.

But even Coe acknowleges that the Aztecs were an imperialist culture engaged in aggressive war for the sake of territory, victims for human sacrifice, slaves, T. cacao, and other wares.

This is an argument that does not need to be had. And if anyone is interested in a truly scholarly work about pre-Columbian Meso-American life, then read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. This new work, which contains scholarship unavailable to the Coes, shows that the population of the New World exceeded that of contemporary Europe, and provides clear-eyed descriptions based on the archaeological record, and based on new DNA research, of life during that time.

But the purpose of the Coe's book, ostensibly, is to give the reader the history of chocolate, not to go into long diatribes against Spaniards, or to make comments like this "Our almost exclusive devotion to taking our chocolate 'straight' is singularly unimaginative." Um, well, we don't. We eat chocolate on top of every sweet thing known to man, mix it with our coffee, and we even brew it in our beer. We consume it in solid, powdered and liquid form. We just don't mix it with chili, or drink it cold mixed with cornmeal. This hardly translates into "unimaginative" cooking, any more than the Aztecs are unimaginative because they only took their chocolate in liquid form.

Coe's defensiveness concerning the Aztecs causes him to discount eyewitness accounts by Aztecs and Spaniards alike. Apparently, the Aztecs felt that T. cacao was an intoxicant and an aphrodisiac. The Coes vehemently disagreed that it was, and vehemently disagreed that the Aztec king would ever need an aphrodisiac, and besides, the Spaniards all were constipated from their bad diet. Yes, it really does get that silly.

In fact, it gets so silly, that Michael Coe by the end of the book is defending the Marquis de Sade as an epicure who's getting picked on by the authorities. Yes, chocolate is circuitously involved, but anyone who quotes the Marquis de Sade as an authority on pleasure needs to have his head examined. Anyone who's read 120 Days of Sodom knows why.

The Coes can't be faulted for their ignorance of medical and pharmacological research that had yet to take place as of the writing of their book, but current research shows that chocolate has a direct impact on neurotransmitters in the brain that affect the sense of well-being and of ones that might put the consumer in a more amorous frame of mind. And T. cacao is a mild stimulant. The medical reality, though, could be said to be irrelevant. The Aztecs served chocolate to the bride and groom at wedding ceremonies. The Aztecs associated chocolate with life-giving blood. To the Aztecs, chocolate was associated with sex. It constitutes the worst form of cultural imperialism to suggest that the Aztecs didn't know what they were talking about, and discount eyewitnesses who emphasized Aztec usage of chocolate consistent with this Aztec cultural view. The Aztecs don't need the Coes to tell them what their chocolate really means to them, because the Aztecs explicitly stated it in their liturgy, poetry, sculpture, commerce and ceremony. And the Coes might want to reconsider the accuracy of the Aztec position since our culture also considered chocolate to be an aphrodisiac prior to the recent scientific discoveries, which is why American men give it to women on Valentine's Day.

The Coes also make much of the fact that, they say, chocolate can't be an intoxicant, so the Aztecs are a bunch of puritans when they say that it is. We have already discussed that T. cacao causes an altered state of consciousness by affecting neurotransmitters. In our world, to be intoxicated one's motor skills must be affected, as when one consumes alcohol or marijuana, or one's judgment must become completely obliterated, as when one consumes cocaine, hallucinogens, or crystal meth. But from this we do not conclude that all those Aztecs are making it all up; a reliable scholar does not discard contemporary accounts and contemporary usage, but instead concludes that the Aztec concept of "intoxication" does not coincide with the Western concept. One concludes that the Aztec usage of the word is more nuanced than ours.

Coe discounts one eyewitness who fails to agree with him on the subject of when Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin consumed chocolate at a "colossal event" by saying that "it should be kept in mind that these are the recollections of an old man in his eighties." And so Coe dehumanizes an eyewitness based on his age for the simple sin of failing to agree with him. Coe's basis for disagreeing with the eyewitness is that chocolate can't possibly be an aphrodisiac and how dare anyone suggest that Motecuhzoma needs an aphrodisiac just because he has a large harem.

Coe's huffiness affects his scholarship later when discussing the origin of the word "chocolate." He takes up the Maya verb "chukola'j" which means "to drink chocolate together." But he is mystified that Europeans did away with the Nahuatl term for chocolate: cacahuatl. Only at the very end of a long monologue does he grasp the most obvious point: No speaker of any Romance language wants to drink a runny brown substance called "caca"-anything. The name changed from cacahuatl for the same reason that we no longer refer to that long-eared furry animal that hops and eats carrots as a "coney" -- and coney rhymes with "money." We call it a "rabbit." But we still keep the association with coney, as when we talk about a woman of ill-repute performing the coital act with the frequency of a rabbit, and when Emma's father tells newly-widowed Charles Bovary, "We'll have you shoot a rabbit in the fields to help you get over your sorrow."

The Coes' failure to recognize the emotional and social impact of language, and the sense that they know best, and that the Aztecs must stop their silliness in thinking they needed an aphrodisiac, and the Europeans must stop being so benighted, is part of a whole unappetizing and academically-deficient package.

Ironically, the book ends with a snobby list of select chocolates that we are told meets the Coes' specifications as true chocolate -- all of which contain at least 70% cocoa. This list is entirely inadequate. There are terms of art for discussing the taste of chocolate, just as their are for wine, beer, coffee and tea. A reader who wants to be told what certain chocolates taste like could easily find more lively and comprehensive guides that teach the reader what to look for in the finest chocolates, and those terms of art, just as such guides are available for connoisseurs of wine, beer, coffee or tea.

I am grateful for the picture of what a cacao pod looks like on the tree and split in half. I have been walking around all my life with a totally erroneous picture in my head.

But other than that, the Coes' biases, their stated refusal to consider eyewitness accounts and other scholarship if it does not conform to their pre-established bias, the lack of good humor, the hateful tone, and the prescription for Valrhona chocolate or else you are a benighted slob, all make for unappetizing reading.

I can't help but think there is more trustworthy scholarship out there, and more enjoyable sources to consider when reading about chocolate.

Story book style of delivery made this book enjoyable for the entire family. This book was packed full of information yet the manner in which it is written made it enjoyable to read as well as retain. Very informative and interesting as well as fun.

This book went beyond my expectations by presenting the history of chocolate in an unbiased, academic yet readable format. A far cry from high school history textbooks, the authors enchant the reader with stories and historical tid-bits while maintaining a cohesive whole. I definitely recommend this book to chocolate connoisseurs, history-buffs, and chocoholics alike.

"The ultimate origin of processed chocolate, though, seems to lie with the Olmec of the lowland forests of southern Mexico, some three millennia in the past, as shall be seen in Chapter Two." pg. 13

When reading another book called: "Food: A Culinary History," we find information on Chocolate telling of how chocolate was "discovered." They basically explain how the Spanish discover chocolate when they colonized the New World and explain how the Aztecs had used chocolate in their rituals.

Which rituals? (You will be shocked)
Who actually first discovered the Theobroma cacao plant/tree or learned how to use the beans (they look a lot like giant almonds in the picture) in the pods (look like an elongated squash) growing directly from the tree trunk? (It wasn't the Aztecs)
Do ungerminated beans have the same flavor as germinated beans?

The story of chocolate is extremely detailed. This book traces the discovery of chocolate from it's earliest pre-Columbian roots to modern times. The way we serve chocolate today almost seems primitive when you read how many ways the Aztecs made their chocolate drinks.

Honeyed Chocolate
Flowered Chocolate
Green Vanilla Flavored Chocolate
Bright Red Chocolate

It is amazing how this book came together as it has, because Sophie D. Coe was diagnosed with cancer before the book was completed. Her husband, Michael D. Coe, took on the responsibility of literally thousands of pages of notes and finished a book she started.

The authors spent hundreds of hours tracing down all possible references to chocolate in Libraries in America and Europe. They also searched in 400-year-old books in the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome.

The story of Chocolate is amazing. Just the way it is made is a process that was kept secret for many years.

From Research I've done in the past:
Seed pods, growing on the trunk and main branches are harvested and opened with sharp blades to reveal creamy white cacao beans which darken, then ferment under banana leaves for up to nine days as they lay in the sun. After a 250* to 350* hour-long roasting process, the beans are dehulled leaving small pieces called nibs.

Cocoa powder results from ground roasted beans which have the cocoa butter removed. After the cocoa butter is extracted, dry cakes of cocoa are ground and sifted to make fine cocoa powder. Most cocoa powder is naturally 97.75% caffeine-free. A 1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder contains about .0002 ounces of caffeine. There is 10 times as much caffeine in a 6-ounce cup of coffee.

The Dutch chemist Coenraad Van Houten added alkali to neutralize the acidity of chocolate and mellow the flavor. This is how the darker Dutch-process cocoa was created. Black cocoa is slightly more bitter and is the darkest cocoa powder available. It is best combined with a Dutch-process cocoa powder. When manufacturers make chocolate bars, the roasted beans are crushed with sugar and vanilla to make chocolate liquor.

The chocolate liquor is refined to evaporate excess moisture and acidity, then it is ground so fine that the mouth no longer perceives the beans as individual particles. After heating and cooling, chocolate is poured into molds, cooled and wrapped to be sold as bittersweet, semisweet or unsweetened chocolate bars, depending on sugar content or lack of it.

This book takes you on a "chocolate" journey. This is a book about the history of chocolate and does contain some rather interesting "chocolate drink formulas."

I guess one of my only objections might include places where the authors called a ritual "spectacular" instead of "detailed/extravagant." It made it seem that they were defending the Aztec's brutal way of life although I'm sure they were not. They just tried to look at the reality of the situation and probably found the rituals rather out of the ordinary. The reason for the rituals seems based on "fear that the world would end."

There also did seem to be some rather morbid uses for chocolate in the past. There is also a passage that says something about a "baseless" claim for chocolate having aphrodisiac properties. We do know that it contains substances, which do produce an "in love" feeling.

What really had my attention was the topic of Crillo beans vs. "Forastero" beans. The Crillo tree produces the best quality beans, while the Forastero produces a more bitter bean. Valrhona Manjari is made exclusively with rare Indian Ocean Crillo beans. This gives the chocolate a winey, bittersweet flavor and incredible aroma.

If you have yet to taste this or use it in cooking, look for it online or by looking for the N.Y. Cake and Baking Distributor catalog or Formaggio Kitchen catalog.

Many chefs swear by this chocolate and I can tell you it is the best I've found besides a chocolate I love called "Peter's Chocolate from Nestle." Nestle chocolate is my ultimate favorite. Especially the milk chocolate. The use of cocoa butter in place of all those other palm oils is rather refreshing. Being one can be highly allergic to palm oils and cottonseed oils and the like.

The difference between the bars is that you can eat Peter's Chocolate straight off the bars, but the Valrhona Manjari bars are a bit bitter on their own. When you mix in a little cream and sugar, it becomes magic.

Valrhona chocolate is of course considered to be one of the finest chocolates in the world. I myself won't use anything but Valrhona Manjari in my Chocolate Ice Cream and Mocha Freeze. I also discovered Valrhona Caraque for use in Truffles. The authors also include the meaning for "Manjari" which is "Sanskrit for "bouquet."

If you are hungry for information about chocolate, this is the best book I've read so far. It is intensely detailed and does seem to have been written because of a love for chocolate!

Have a few cups while you read. Just don't forget the whipped cream and nutmeg!

~The Rebecca Review

I really enjoyed this book and learning about the Mayan / Aztec custom of Cocoa, how it was prepared, grown and used in their society. How the Europeans learned of this exotic "bean" and slowly adopted it. But as being a member of the Food Industry, the book was very light on the modern history of chocolate, how it is prepared and the changes that chocolate went through the last two hundred years. Felt a little robbed at the end.

This book attempts to be two different things at once. First a history book about chocolate. The vast majority of the research was done by Sophie D. Coe before her death but even Mrs. Coe was a scientist who loved chocolate, not a historian in the truest sense. Her research in its time may been groundbreaking and certain was quite extensive but this second edition added no new material that I could find and scholarship on chocolate, on the central and southern American pre-historical peoples, and even genetics has advanced much. A good basic introduction this may well be but it is also very dated.

Secondly this book is a work of love. Finished by her husband, Michael D. Coe, who tried to pull together her research and write this book, it is an admirable book simply because of his motivation. However, the writing needs work in several sections that are awkward and an editor should have aided him more to make the the text clearer. The book is too heavily weighed toward pre-history where the evidence is most shaky and most changed over the decade plus since the book first came out. For later chapters the diagrams, images, and discussion are a good start but even there it feels uneven in terms of cultures covered and information given.

While Coe may have taken two years to pull together his wife's research and write the book, he really needed editorial help to see the places where there are gaps and to smooth out the roughly written sections. Furthermore a good editor should have insisted he or someone else update the book with the latest research. The diagrams and images are the best reason to buy this book but you'll want to think about the evidence before accepting interpretations; something you should do with any history book popular or scholarly anyway.

Okay I must first confess I only read the first edition of this book, not the fancy schmancy second edition, but since I feel the two editions are mostly alike I shall proceed to review anyway, or I will just add the proviso that this review is intended for the first edition of this book. Anyway, back to the actual review. This book was sweet and I mean sweet like ground cacao beans mixed with sugar. Not only will this book tell you a ton about chocolate and the cacao tree from which it sprang(which info is sure to dazzle all your friends, if you can remember it), but it also gives info about the civilizations and people which produced and used chocolate from its origins with the Olmec, to the modern age of mass produced chocolate bars. The role of chocolate in history and the impact it has made in the lives of millions across time and space is truly quite fascinating. So if you like chocolate, or history, or both(like me) then I would highly recommend this book.

The history of chocolate has never been so wonderfully woven like it is in this book. This uncomplicated book traces the cacao story back to its origin with the Olmec, Maya, and Aztecs, and from there it migrates to Europe and taking the noble courts by storm. The book goes beyond just the basic history, it lists in details how chocolate is manufactured, prepared and consumed since the beginning of time to the modern age. There isn't a part of chocolate the Coes don't cover. Unfortunately, this book focuses too much on the ancient history of chocolate with special attention to the three ancient Mesoamerican civilizations and then European consumption in the 16-19th century. The last chapter speaks briefly, too briefly, on the modern history of chocolate in the 20th century. The authors do not cover the modern chocolate trade, its environmental impact, what it means for million of people, or what are the modern significances of chocolate. The story basically stops at Hershey and his factory in Pennsylvania. The epilogue asks the readers to be conscious in buying fair-trade chocolate, but other than that, there isn't a modern history of chocolate in this book. Overall, however, this is a well written and heavily researched book that dispels many misconceptions and provides a clearer understanding about this dark mistress of our taste bud.