The miracle bean
What did Edmund Hillary and his team of mountaineers munch as they struggled to reach Mount Everest?
What did the astronauts carry with them aboard their spacecrafts?
What is the most commonly given gift, delighting the person who receives it?
The answer is a nine –letters word- chocolate.
Chocolate can be eaten as a sweet, it can be sipped as a drink; it is a favorite flavoring for cakes and ice-creams. And all this is the miracle of a small, bitter bean –the seed of the cacao tree.
The cacao tree was discovered in Africa almost four thousand years ago. Much later, it was found in Mexico, where a traveler saw the king drinking cup after cup of a bitter liquid made from the cacao beans. It was considered so precious, that it was served in golden cups. Here cacao beans were used as currency too.
The English made it into a sweet drink by adding sugar and milk. It became so popular, that `chocolate houses,’ just like coffee-houses today, could be found all over the city of London.
It was only towards the end of the last century that the Swiss found a way of making `eating chocolate’.
The cacao beans travel a long way, before they are used in the mouth –watering chocolate that we love.
Cacao trees are grown in plantations. The pods grow on the trunks and lower branches. When ripe, they are red or yellow in color. After pods are harvested, they are split open, and the beans inside are removed. They are separated and left out to dry. Each pod contains twenty to forty beans. The dried beans are then out into bags, ready to be shipped across the seas.
At a chocolate factory the beans are cleaned, roasted and shelled. They are then broken into pieces called nibs. These nibs are put into large crushing machines to get dark liquid called chocolate liquor. This liquid is then heated to give cocoa butter and cocoa power.
To make the smoothest chocolate, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, milk and sugar are mixed together and churned for many hours. However, each chocolate maker has his own special recipe. It’s kept a secret.
That is why each brand name has a different taste. And giving chocolate news is a special magazine, printed in chocolate-colored and chocolate-scented ink!
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