1. The scientific name of the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, is Latin for ...
(a) God’s joke (b) Food of the gods (c) Flowering trunk
2. Who were the first real chocolate lovers?
(a) Maya (b) Aztecs (c) Anasazi
3. Who was the first European to have encountered the cacao plant?
(a) Christopher Columbus (b) Hernando Cortez (c) John Cabot
4. What nation kept chocolate a secret for a century until a royal marriage spread the treat to France?
(a) Switzerland (b) Holland (c) Spain
5. To adapt the standard Aztec chocolate drink recipe to Spanish tastes, a panel was set up. Upon consideration, they added several ingredients — cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar — and subtracted a few, including which of the following?
(a) Chilli pepper (b) Llama butter (c) Rum
6. After cacao is harvested the beans are fermented, dried, roasted, shelled and ground to a paste. What is the paste called?
(a) Cacoa (b) Chocolate liquor (c) Mother of Chocolate
7. Recent studies have shown that including chocolate in one’s diet may help ward off heart disease. What type of chocolate is thought to be particularly effective in this regard?
(a) Dark chocolate (b) Liqueur-filled chocolate (c) Milk chocolate
8. What chemical does chocolate naturally contain that is produced by the brain when a person is in love?
(a) Quimica romantica (b) Phenylethylamine (c) Être amoureux (French for ‘to be in love’)
9. In which country is the famous Toblerone bar (with its classic triangular profile designed to resemble the Alps) manufactured?
(a) Austria (b) Switzerland (c) Germany
10. Who started the first “chocolate box”?
(a) Richard Cadbury (b) Johann Jacob Schweppe (c) Rudolphe Lindt
ANSWERS
1. Food of the gods. Carolus Linneus, the Swedish inventor of the modern taxonomical system for naming plants and animals, gave the chocolate tree this genus name in 1753.
2. Maya (250-900 AD). They were the first chocolate aficionados who harvested, fermented, roasted, and ground the seeds into a paste. When mixed with water, chilli peppers, cornmeal and other ingredients, it made a frothy, spicy chocolate drink.
3. Christopher Columbus. On August 15, 1502, during Columbus’ fourth and final American voyage, the Spaniards captured a native dugout laden with trade goods, including cacao beans, off the Honduran coast. Columbus did not make much of this chance acquisition. It was not until Cortez returned from Mexico twenty years later with three chests of cocoa beans in his loot that Europe saw the first glimmerings of what would eventually become a world-wide mania.
4. Spain. When Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1519 he went home with golden plunder, cacao beans and the recipe from Aztec emperor Montezuma’s court. Served with honey and sugar, the new drink tickled the tastebuds of Spanish royalty, who kept its preparation secret in monasteries for nearly 100 years. By the time Spanish princess Maria Theresa gave her fiancée Louis XIV a gift of chocolate in 1615, Spain’s political power had waned, and chocolate found its way to the rest of Europe.
5. Chilli pepper. Chocolate was a luxury drink among the Aztecs. It was a drink of the rich and powerful, and was also served to soothe prospective human sacrifices in their last hours. In addition to the pepper, the Aztec recipe called for flowers, vanilla and wild honey.
6. Chocolate liquor. When chocolate liquor is squeezed in a hydraulic press, it separates into a fatty material (cocoa butter) and a powder (ground cocoa bean solids), which is sold as cocoa. Chocolate liquor, cocoa butter and cocoa are all used as ingredients in chocolate-making. White chocolate includes cocoa butter, but no chocolate liquor or cocoa.
7. Dark chocolate. The most significant heart-healthy component of chocolate is a group of compounds called flavonoids. Dark chocolate, which is much richer in flavonoids than other types, has been found to promote the health of the cells lining blood vessels, and to improve arterial flow.
8. Phenylethylamine. Chocolate contains the highest concentration in any food of phenylethylamine, which combines with dopamine to produce a mild anti-depressant effect.
9. Switzerland. Toblerone bars combine chocolate, nougat, almonds and egg white. Originally produced by their creator, Jean Tobler, they are now made by the Suchard Company in Berne.
10. Richard Cadbury. The first chocolate box was introduced by Richard Cadbury in 1868, when he decorated a candy box with a painting of his young daughter holding a kitten in her arms.
