Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (6 page)

Richard had never seen a cocoa plantation and exercised his curiosity by collecting stories of explorers. While the traders he met in Mincing Lane were never short on anecdotal accounts, he could learn more by corresponding with experts at the tropical botanical gardens in Jamaica and the Pamplemousse Botanic Gardens in Mauritius.
Closer to home, knowledge of tropical species was increasing through the iconic glasshouses at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The magnificent Palm House had recently been completed, and in the early 1860s, work was just beginning on the Temperate House. Botanists knew cocoa by its scientific name,
Theobroma cacao
or food of the Gods, a label assigned to the plant in 1753 by the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linnaeus.

“This inestimable plant,” Richard wrote, “is evergreen, has drooping bright green leaves . . . and bears flowers and fruit at all seasons of the year.” He knew it flourished in humid tropical regions close to the equator and was acutely sensitive to slight changes in climate. The cocoa pod itself he described accurately as an oval pointed shape, “something like a vegetable marrow . . . only more elongated and pointed at the end.” In contrast to European fruit trees, the pods grow directly off the trunk and thickest boughs from very short stalks rather than from finer branches. The outer rind of the pod is thick and when ripened becomes a firm shell. Inside, embedded in a soft, pinkish-white acid pulp are the seeds or beans—as many as thirty to forty within each pod.

Richard’s romantic idea of cocoa plantations also came from reading travel narratives that were occasionally featured in fashionable magazines, such as the
Belgravia.
One such article described a magical tropical paradise, a million miles from Victorian Birmingham. “The vista is like a miniature forest hung with thousands of golden lamps,” enthused a report in
Belgravia
, “anything more lovely cannot be imagined.” Taller trees such as the coral tree were planted around the cocoa trees to provide shade. In March, the coral tree becomes covered in crimson flowers, and “at this season, an extensive plain covered with cocoa plantations is a magnificent object,” declared the
Belgravia
. “The tops of the coral tree present the appearance of being clothed in flames.” Passing through the shady walkways of the plantation was like being “within the spacious aisles of some grand natural temple.”

To harvest the marrow-like cocoa pods, the plantation workers would break them open with a long knife or cutlass. The seeds or beans were scooped out with a wooden spoon, the fleshy pulp scraped
off, and the beans dried in the sun until the pale crimson seed turned a rich almond brown.

Richard could not know just how far into the past the history of cultivating cocoa beans extended. Recent research has revealed three millennia have elapsed since the Olmec, the oldest civilization in the Americas, first domesticated the wild cacao tree. Eking out an existence in the humid lowland forests and savannahs of the Mexican Gulf coast around 1500 to 400 BC, little survives of Olmec culture. Evidence that these early Mexicans consumed cocoa comes principally from studies in historical linguistics. Their word
ka ka wa
is thought to be the earliest pronunciation of cacao.

When the Maya became the dominant culture of Mexico, they extended the cultivation of cocoa across the plains of Guatemala and beyond. In Mayan culture, the rich enjoyed a foaming hot spicy drink. The poor took their cocoa with maize as a starchy porridge-like cold soup that provided easily prepared high-energy food. It could be laced with chili pepper, giving a distinct afterburn, or enhanced with milder flavorings such as vanilla.

Mayan art reveals that cocoa was highly prized. Archaeologists have found images decorating Mayan pottery of a “Cacao God” seated on his throne adorned with cocoa pods. There is evidence suggesting that Mayan aristocrats were buried with lavish amounts of food for the afterlife, including ornate painted jars for cocoa and cocoa flavorings. The earliest image of the preparation of a chocolate drink appears on a Mayan vase from around the eighth century AD, which curiously also depicts a human sacrifice. Two masked figures are beheading their victim, while a woman calmly pours a cocoa drink from one jar to another in order to enhance the much-favored frothy foam.

“European knowledge of cocoa as an article of diet,” Richard found in his survey, “dates from the discovery of the Western world by Christopher Columbus.” On August 15, 1502, during Columbus’s fourth trip to the New World, he reached the island of Guanaja near the Honduran mainland. Two very large canoes suddenly appeared on the horizon. The Spanish captured them and found they were Mayan trading ships laden with cotton, clothing, and maize. According
to Columbus’s son, Ferdinand, there were a great many strange-looking “almonds” on board. “They held these almonds at great price,” he observed. “When any of these almonds fell, they all rushed to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen.” The Europeans could not understand how these little brown pellets could be so valued.

Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in Mexico in 1519, realized that cocoa was highly prized. The bean had special value in Aztec society since it was used as coinage—an idea that gave rise to the expression, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” The Spanish saw that the Aztec people in the provinces paid tributes to their emperor, Montezuma, with large baskets of cocoa beans. The emperor kept a vast store in the royal coffers in the capital city of Tenochtitlan of no less than 40,000 loads: almost 1000 million cocoa beans. The Spanish soon worked out its value. According to one Spanish chronicler, “A tolerably good slave” was worth around one hundred beans, a rabbit cost ten beans, and a prostitute could be procured for as few as eight.

It is now known that the Aztecs, like the Mayans, used their favorite drink in a number of religious rituals, including human sacrifice. The Aztecs believed that their most powerful gods required appeasement, and prisoners of war had to be sacrificed each day to sustain the universe. In one macabre ritual, the heart of a slave was required to be cut out while he was still alive. The slave was selected for his physical perfection because until the time of his sacrifice, he represented the Aztec gods on earth and was treated with reverence. According to the Spanish Dominican friar Diego de Duran, who wrote
The History of the Indies of New Spain
in 1581, as the ritual approached its climax and the true fate of the victim was made known, the slave was required to offer himself for death with heroic courage and joy. Should his bravery falter, he could be “bewitched” by a special cocktail to embolden him, prepared from chocolate and mixed with the blood of former victims and other ingredients that rendered him nearly unconscious.

The cocoa bean found its way to Europe, where it was introduced to the Spanish royal household. The Spanish court initially consumed cocoa the South American way, as a drink in a small bowl,
and then gradually replaced the corn and chilies with sugar and sometimes vanilla or cinnamon. In time elaborate chocolate pots were developed to skim and settle the heavy liquid before pouring, but the Spanish essentially ground the beans in the same way as the South American Indians, crushing them between stones or grinding them with stone and mortar to produce a coarse powder.

Richard Cadbury found one written account of cocoa preparation in Madrid from 1664 in which one hundred cocoa beans, toasted and ground to a powder, were mixed with a similar weight of sugar, twelve ground vanilla pods, two grains of chili pepper, aniseed, six white roses, cinnamon, two dozen almonds and hazelnuts, and achiote powder to lend a red hue. The resulting paste was used to make a cake or block of cocoa, which could be ground to form a drink. But whether mixed with maize or corn to absorb the fatty cocoa oils the Mexican way, or blended with sugar, the cocoa oils made the drink heavy and coarse, and cocoa continued to receive mixed reviews in Spain. Josephus Acosta, a Spanish writer at the turn of the seventeenth century, considered the chocolate drink much overrated, “foolishly and without reason, for it is loathsome . . . having a skum or frothe that is very unpleasant to taste.”

For many years, the Spanish dominated South American cocoa cultivation. They introduced it to the West Indies and to islands such as Trinidad, where it soon became a staple crop. At first, English pirates raiding Spanish ships did not know what the bean was for. In 1648 the English chronicler Thomas Gage observed in his
New Survey of the West Indies
that when the English or Dutch seized a ship loaded with cocoa beans, “In anger and wrath we have hurled overboard this good commodity, not regarding the worth of it.”

Gradually, however, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the cocoa bean found its way into the coffee houses of Europe. Its first mention in England appears in an advertisement in the
Public Advertiser
on June 22 1657: “At a Frenchman’s house in Queensgate Alley is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time at reasonable rates.” In the 1660s, the diarist Samuel Pepys describes enjoying his drink of
“chocolatte” or “Jocolatte” so much that he was soon “slabbering for another.” Henry Stubbe, royal physician to King Charles II, published
A Discourse Concerning Chocolata
in 1662, in which he surveyed the “nature of the cacao-nut” and extolled the health benefits of the drink. Taken with spices it could relieve coughs and colds and strengthen heart and stomach. For anyone “tyred through business,” Stubbes heartily recommended chocolate twice a day. It could even serve as an aphrodisiac. Word of the exotic new drink spread across England. White’s famous Chocolate House, named after its Italian owner, Francis White, opened in 1693 in St. James, London.

Cocoa continued to gain in popularity principally as a drink prepared in the Mexican way, but it also was added as a flavoring to meat dishes, soups, and puddings. In Italy a recipe for chocolate sorbet survives from 1794. Once the mixture was prepared, “The vase is buried in snow layered with salt and frozen.” For the more adventurous palate, Italian recipes from the period listed cocoa as an ingredient in lasagne or added it to fried liver. While most European preparations “were rough . . . and produced poor results,” according to Richard Cadbury, “France developed a better system for roasting and grinding.” The French
confiseurs
got straight on with the sweet course; no messing with chilies, curries, and fried liver. By the nineteenth century, they were winning a reputation for their exquisite handcrafted sweets made from chocolate: delicious mousses, cakes, crèmes, dragées, and chocolate-coated nuts.

With the wheels of European commerce and consumerism driving demand, in the Americas the cultivation of the cocoa bean was gradually extended beyond Mexico and Guatemala, reaching south to the lower slopes of the Andes in Ecuador, the rolling plains of Venezuela, and into the fringes of the Amazon rain forest of Brazil. In the Caribbean, cocoa plantations were established in Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Granada as well as Trinidad, which became a British colony in 1802.

By the mid-nineteenth century, despite the growing interest in the cocoa bean in Europe, it remained expensive and principally a novelty for the wealthy. “When we take into account the indifferent
means of preparation,” concluded Richard Cadbury, “we can hardly be surprised that it did not come into general favour with the public.” As Richard and George struggled to launch their business, the full potential of
Theobroma cacao
had yet to be revealed. The unprepossessing little bean offered the mere tantalizing promise of prosperity.

In the early 1860s, George and Richard hardly needed to undertake the charade of stocktaking, which they did as a matter of course twice a year. They knew their business was not thriving. Cadbury Brothers did not excite the nation’s taste buds. “We determined that we would close the business when we were unable to pay 20 shillings in the pound,” George said, committed to honoring all financial agreements in full. He admitted the stocktaking was “depressing” but nonetheless thrived on the challenge. “We went back again to our work with renewed vigour and were probably happier than most successful men.”

The struggle brought the brothers closer together. Quite apart from sharing the responsibility and the burden, Richard proved to be a delight as a partner. He was “very good natured and constantly up to practical jokes and fun of various kinds,” George wrote, “so that one almost doubts whether immediate success in a business is a blessing.” Workers too recalled Mr. George and Mr. Richard with a “cheery smile,” although they knew “the Firm was in low water and losing money.” They were aware of how dire things were and “at one stage expected any day to hear that the works were to be shut.”

As losses mounted, Richard formed a list of everything he owned, noting the price each item would fetch if it had to be sold at auction. In 1862, his young wife, Elizabeth, was pregnant, and on September 27, the arrival of his first son, Barrow (named after Richard’s mother’s family), was great cause for celebration. But Richard knew the financial security of his young family was uncertain. Both brothers planned to shut the business rather than risk defaulting on any money owed
and accruing debt. The stocktaking at the end of the second year was particularly gloomy. By Christmas 1862, the Cadbury brothers’ losses had escalated to a further 304 pounds each.