Etymology
Where does the word "chocolate" come from?
Chocolate
History of chocolate Chocolate (color) History of chocolate in Spain Chocolate Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company
History_of_chocolate-History_in_Europe Chocolate_(color)-Etymology History_of_chocolate_in_Spain-Naming_the_new_product Chocolate-Types Omanhene_Cocoa_Bean_Company-Abstract
Until the 16th century, no European had ever heard of the popular drink from the Central and South American peoples. Christopher Columbus encountered the cacao bean on his fourth mission to the Americas on August 15, 1502 when he and his crew seized a large native canoe that proved to contain among other goods for trade cacao beans. His son Ferdinand commented that the natives greatly valued the beans, which he termed almonds, "for when they were brought on board ship together with their goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen." But while Columbus took cacao beans with him back to Spain, it made no impact until Spanish friars introduced chocolate to the Spanish court. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first European to encounter chocolate when he observed it in the court of Montezuma in the 16th century. Montezuma's daily intake of chocolate was described by Antonio de Solís in 1685:Jose de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later 16th century, described its use more generally:Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant taste. Yet it is a drink very much esteemed among the Indians, where with they feast noble men who pass through their country. The Spaniards, both men and women that are accustomed to the country are very greedy of this Chocolate. They say they make diverse sorts of it, some hot, some cold, and some temperate, and put therein much of that "chili"; yea, they make paste thereof, the which they say is good for the stomach and against the catarrh. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, chocolate was imported to Europe. There, it quickly became a court favorite. It was still served as a beverage, but the Spanish added sugar or honey to counteract the natural bitterness. Within about a hundred years, chocolate established a foothold throughout Europe. How the word "chocolate" came into Spanish is not certain. Perhaps the most cited explanation is that "chocolate" comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, from the word "chocolatl", which many sources derived from the Nahuatl word "xocolatl" (pronounced ) made up from the words "xococ" meaning sour or bitter, and "atl" meaning water or drink. However, as William Bright noted the word "chocolatl" doesn't occur in central Mexican colonial sources making this an unlikely derivation. Santamaria gives a derivation from the Yucatec Maya word "chokol" meaning hot, and the Nahuatl "atl" meaning water. More recently Dakin and Wichman derive it from another Nahuatl term, "chicolatl" from Eastern Nahuatl meaning "beaten drink". They derive this term from the word for the frothing stick, "chicoli". The word "xocoatl" means beverage of maize. The words "cacaua atl" mean drink of cacao. The word "xocolatl" does not appear in Molina's dictionary. The new craze for chocolate brought with it a thriving slave market, as between the early 1600s and late 1800s the laborious and slow processing of the cacao bean was manual. Cacao plantations spread, as the English, Dutch, and French colonized and planted. With the depletion of Mesoamerican workers, largely to disease, cacao production was often the work of poor wage laborers and African slaves. Wind-powered and horse-drawn mills were utilized to speed production. But chocolate would remain a treat for the elite and the wealthy until the arrival of the Industrial Revolution brought steam-powered engines to speed the processing of the bean. The first steam-driven chocolate mill was created by a French inventor named Debuisson in the early 1700s. As the processes for chocolate making sped the process, new techniques and approaches revolutionized the texture and text. In 1815, Dutch chemist Coenraad Van Houten introduced alkaline salts to chocolate, which reduced its bitterness. A few years thereafter, in 1828, he created a press to remove about half the natural fat (cacao butter) from chocolate liquor, which made chocolate both cheaper to produce and more consistent in quality. This innovation introduced the modern era of chocolate. Known as "dutch cocoa", this machine-pressed chocolate was instrumental in the transformation of chocolate to its solid form when in 1847 Joseph Fry learned to make chocolate moldable by adding back melted cacao butter. Milk had sometimes been used as an addition to chocolate beverages since the mid-17th century, but in 1875 Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate by mixing a powdered milk developed by Henri Nestlé with the liquor. In 1879, the texture and taste of chocolate was further improved when Rudolphe Lindt invented the conching machine. Besides Nestle, a number of notable chocolate companies had their start in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Cadbury was manufacturing boxed chocolates in England by 1868. In 1893, Milton S. Hershey purchased chocolate processing equipment at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and soon began the career of Hershey's chocolates with chocolate-coated caramels. 
The word "chocolate" entered the English language from Spanish. How the word came into Spanish is less certain, and there are multiple competing explanations. Perhaps the most cited explanation is that "chocolate" comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, from the word "chocolātl", which many sources derived from the Nahuatl word "xocolātl" made up from the words "xococ" meaning sour or bitter, and "ātl" meaning water or refreshment. However, as William Bright noted the word "chocolatl" does not occur in central Mexican colonial sources making this an unlikely derivation. Santamaria gives a derivation from the Yucatec Maya word "chokol" meaning hot, and the Nahuatl "atl" meaning water. More recently Dakin and Wichmann derive it from another Nahuatl term, "chicolatl" from Eastern Nahuatl meaning "beaten drink". They derive this term from the word for the frothing stick, "chicoli". 
The Aztec language, Nahuatl, was difficult for the Spanish troops stationed in Mexico to pronounce. The common ending "tl" sounded like "te." Hernán Cortés' difficulties with the language was evident in the letters he sent, where he writes "Temistitan" instead of Tenochtitlan and the tribal god Huitzilopochtli as "Huichilobos." Coexistence between the two cultures led to the Spanish language borrowing certain Mesoamerican phrases or words such as coyote or maiz. Many dictionaries suggest that the word chocolate comes from the Nahuatl "chocolatl", based on an evolution from "-tl" to "-te", however, there are problems with this hypothesis. Firstly Coe argued that the word "chocolatl" does not appear in the Aztec cultural writings of the time. Similarly the word is not found in the work of Alonso de Molina, a lexicographer of the time, who wrote a book about the grammar of the Aztec language in 1555. It is also absent from Bernardino de Sahagún's encyclopedia and from the "Huehuetlatolli" ("The words of the ancients") a guide to moral conduct. In all these works the word "cacahuatl" (cocoa water) is used. In his periodic letters, Hernán Cortés refers to 'cocoa.' At an indeterminate time in the 16th century, the Spanish of New Spain began to use the word "chocolatl. "The Royal Family's physician Francisco Hernández de Córdoba already knew this name in the 1570s, describing chocolatl as a drink consisting of cocoa beans and "pochotl," a type of tree seed, both ground to powder. José de Acosta and his contemporaries also used the name "chocolatl" in Nueva España and the Yucatán making the word a neologism. However others have suggested that the word "chocolatl" came from "xocoatl," where "xoco" means bitter and "atl" means water. Another possible explanation comes from the colonial habit of making hot cocoa, with many Mayan dictionaries of the time explaining that "the drink called chocolate" comes from "chacau haa" (literally 'hot water') which is phonetically close to "chocolatl". 
Several types of chocolate can be distinguished. Pure, unsweetened chocolate contains primarily cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions. Much of the chocolate consumed today is in the form of sweet chocolate, combining chocolate with sugar. Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate that additionally contains milk powder or condensed milk. In the U.K. and Ireland, milk chocolate must contain a minimum of 20% total dry cocoa solids; in the rest of the European Union, the minimum is 25%. "White chocolate" contains cocoa butter, sugar, and milk, but no cocoa solids. Chocolate contains alkaloids such as theobromine and phenethylamine, which have some physiological effects in humans and has been linked to serotonin levels in the brain, but the presence of theobromine renders it toxic to some animals, such as dogs and cats. Dark chocolate has been promoted for unproven health benefits, as it seems to possess substantial amounts of antioxidants that reduce the formation of free radicals. White chocolate is formed from a mixture of sugar, cocoa butter and milk solids. Although its texture is similar to that of milk and dark chocolate, it does not contain any cocoa solids. Because of this, many countries do not consider white chocolate as chocolate at all. Although white chocolate was first introduced by Hebert Candies in 1955, Mars, Incorporated, was the first to produce it within the United States. Because it does not contain any cocoa solids, white chocolate does not contain any theobromine, meaning it can be consumed by animals. It is usually not used for cooking. Dark chocolate is produced by adding fat and sugar to the cacao mixture. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration calls this "sweet chocolate", and requires a 15% concentration of chocolate liquor. European rules specify a minimum of 35% cocoa solids. Dark chocolate, with its high cocoa content, is a rich source of epicatechin and gallic acid, which are thought to possess cardioprotective properties. Dark chocolate has also been said to reduce the possibility of a heart attack when consumed regularly in small amounts. Semisweet chocolate is a dark chocolate with a low sugar content. Bittersweet chocolate is chocolate liquor to which some sugar (typically a third), more cocoa butter, vanilla and sometimes lecithin have been added. It has less sugar and more liquor than semisweet chocolate, but the two are interchangeable in baking. Unsweetened chocolate is pure chocolate liquor, also known as bitter or baking chocolate. It is unadulterated chocolate: the pure, ground, roasted chocolate beans impart a strong, deep chocolate flavor. Raw chocolate, often referred to as raw cacao, is always dark and a minimum of 75% cacao. Because the act of processing results in the loss of certain vitamins and minerals (such as magnesium), some consider raw cacao to be a more nutritious form of chocolate. Chocolate may have whitish spots on the dark chocolate part. This is called chocolate bloom and is an indication that sugar and/or fat has separated due to poor storage. It is not toxic. 
Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company is a chocolate company headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Omanhene's chocolate beans come from the forests of Ghana. The difference between Omanhene's chocolate and their competitors (according to the company website) is that Omanhene's chocolate bars are made and processed in Ghana, whereas competitors buy the beans from a tropical country and ship them to countries like Canada or the United States to make chocolate bars. 