By Emily Duran '28
Hot chocolate was created around 500 B.C by the Mayans and Aztecs in Central America. However they didn’t drink hot chocolate like we do today. They made this drink using ground cacao beans. Cacao beans, a plant native to South America, are a fully fermented seed from a cacao tree. They are found in the Amazon forest and are used in many other mesoamerican foods.
The Mayans and Aztecs mixed the cacao with water, chili peppers, and sometimes honey, and their hot chocolate, which was served cold, was spicy and bitter. They thought it had special powers, like being able to give them energy and strength, so it had importance in cultural ceremonies.
When Europeans, like Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés, came to the
Americas in the 1500s, they discovered this drink and brought it back to Europe. The Spanish added sugar to it to make it sweeter, and they started drinking it hot instead of cold. Over time, hot chocolate became popular in places like Spain and France. It was mostly enjoyed by the upper class because it was expensive to make and hard to import the cacao beans.
In the 1800s, things started to change. A man named John Cadbury, an England native, began making solid chocolate bars and cocoa powder from the cacao beans. He learned if you mix cocoa powder into milk you could make a creamier version of hot chocolate. This new form of hot chocolate could be cheaply produced and it became more accessible.
By the 19th century, hot chocolate was being sold all over Europe and eventually spread to the U.S. where it became the delicious drink we know today. Now, we can buy hot chocolate in packets, mix it with milk, and enjoy it with whipped cream or marshmallows whenever we want.
Photo Courtesy of Pinterest
Sources: wikipedia.org
Edited by Kavya Chacko '26 Catherine Polatidis '26 and Ms. Brilliant
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