Winters in Montana can be long and dark, so it was with pleasure that I found myself working in New Mexico for a week last month. I took breaks to run and hike, and even ventured into historic Sante Fe to sample drinking chocolate. Enchanted by its intoxicating flavor, I picked up several varieties to enjoy at home.
Sante Fe’s historic references to chocolate culture abound. Chocolate played a crucial role in economic exchanges across a wide swath of the continent. The cacao tree, a notoriously finicky plant, grows only in equatorial regions, but even within that bounded zone it demands special attention: consistent moisture, the presence of pollinating midges, altitudes that deliver temperatures consistently above 60°F, and treatments to combat disease. Despite European explorers’ misguided drawings of cacao hanging from branches, the pods grow from spongey patches directly on the cacao trunk. Getting to ripeness is just one of many hurdles, as harvested pods must be picked and cut open to reveal the sweet pith, a favorite food of squirrels, before the seeds are plucked out, fermented, dried, and roasted, a process that demands the work of many human hands.
Chocolate has long delivered mind- and body-altering results, making its propagation, harvest, and preparation a sensible human bargain. Cacao seeds contain multiple compounds that have generated wild claims and dramatic advertising copy in recent centuries, but its consistent human use, dating back thousands of years, demonstrates its lasting cultural impact. The Olmec, Maya, and Aztec peoples, residing in the ecosystems most friendly to cacao, were the first to cultivate the plant, and paid homage to cacao’s unique taste profile and powerful physiological effects by building entire cuisines around the quirky pod.
While I long for an egalitarian utopia and grimace at the performance of class status, history falls all over itself with examples of the ways that humans have structured culture to demonstrate the superiority of certain groups over others. In ancient cacao-based cultures, a detailed protocol dictated who consumed chocolate and who served it. While it is no justification, elaborate methods of food preparation and the evolution of exquisite flavors emerged alongside this unfortunate social stratification.
With specialized vessels constructed specifically for imbibing, Olmec practices elevated the consumption of drinking chocolate to a ritualized affair. The Mayans developed a multi-step process in which liquid chocolate was repetitively poured from one receptacle into another, all to generate the optimal quantity and quality of froth. With similarly intense interest in chocolate foam, Aztec peoples held forth on methods of consumption,
compiling an impressive compendium of flavorings for and preparations of chocolate. For these cuisines, chocolate, in all its forms, resided at the heart of intricate culinary traditions. As Sophie Coe and Michael Coe carefully document, chocolate “was not a single concoction to be drunk; it was a vast and complex array of drinks, gruels, porridges, powders, and probably solid substances, to all of which could be added a wide variety of flavorings.”[1]
The ways that the Aztecs drank chocolate, the receptacles in which the Olmecs presented chocolate, and the spices, herbs, and essences that Mayans added to chocolate all carried meaning – messages about social ranking, but also about connection to the plants and processes at work in the fields and forests from which those substances were harvested.
The creation of elaborate social rituals around particular foods like chocolate combines the joys of flavor with the human desire to eat in the presence of others. The status-related history of chocolate cannot be ignored, but neither can its striking flavor. Chocolate in America has more democratic (or at least more accessible) trappings, with its dramatic flavor profile muted in the butterfat and processed sugar now employed in its solid-form presentation. Most contemporary Americans of all income levels eat chocolate routinely, albeit a less potent version of the Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec cacao culinary interpretation.
Chocolate brings a rich and tortured past to its current foil-wrapped enshrinement in the American diet, and while its flavor is beguiling, eating chocolate also gives me pause. I relate to asparagus and hogs with just a few short steps in between; my existence flows from my particular geographic context. I love the local and trumpet the joys of eating from my own foodshed, but I also relish flavors and textures new to my palate. Tasting and smelling chocolate in all its forms is a rare privilege. I can experience chocolate only because unrecognized laborers harvest cacao pods in the equatorial mist and gallons of fossil fuels are consumed in transporting faraway chocolate to western Montana.
In this global economy, we are each embedded in systems of exchange with far reach and devastating impact. I am naïve to think that my seed purchases from a Maine co-op count as some form of idealized local-ness, or that the gas I burn to commute across miles of Montana highways won’t hasten the climate shifts we are already experiencing. Alongside those realities, I am struck by the power of certain foods, the ways that ingredients seemingly sprout legs, travel about the globe, and insert themselves (with or without social stratification) into foodways. Our species’ desire for taste and newness, our excitement for the as-yet-unexperienced, has fueled the sharing of foods across time and space, as historic migration and trade routes demonstrate. Driven by the desire for flavor and gustatory surprise, we have procured powerful flavors from distant biomes.
Chocolate is a thrilling substance with one of the richest food histories of all our global ingestibles. My desire to taste, consume, and experience cacao in varied forms is undeniable, as are the ethical issues raised by such an endeavor. The contemplation of foodways generates prickly questions about people and place, and endlessly satisfies my compulsion to both taste and reflect. Will I continue drinking intense chocolate with delight? Or should this be a quickly passing practice? Thinking about chocolate, I am left pondering…and tasting, savoring the fraught space and inescapable inquiry that comes with thoughtful eating.
[1] The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie Coe and Michael Coe (originally published in 1996, quote from p. 49) is considered the classic text on chocolate history and contains critical documentation of cacao’s importance in indigenous Meso-American cultures.
A fun side-note on the Parrot for anyone local enough to visit the historic chocolatier, pictured at left in its current incarnation, ...
The Parrot opened in the 1920s as a trendy soda fountain, and has been in business with various decorating schemes and associated collections of kitsch ever since. I have a particular fondness for the place, as my great-grandfather regularly took my grandmother there for treats when she was a child.
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