In a paper on the history of chocolate she recently delivered at Cambridge, Mahony says sweetened hot cocoa quickly became the rage of European nobility. By the end of the 17th century hot chocolate was the preferred breakfast drink of upper-class Europe. To add a little zip, the lords and ladies sometimes added a bit of cinnamon, vanilla, anise, almonds, hazel nuts, cloves, orange flower water or even musk. Enthusiasts argued that chocolate could "cure the pallid complexion, make a thin person robust, and increase virility in men and fertility in women." With claims such as that, suspicious clergymen quickly condemned chocolate as a "violent inflamer of the passions." At the very least, they admonished, it had to be kept away from the monks.
The delights of chocolate finally seeped down to the lower classes in the 19th century. Until then, limited cultivation of cacao and the difficult, time-consuming preparation of the beans had kept the cost prohibitively high. Mechanization and the spread of cacao cultivation beyond Central America to Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and elsewhere made it affordable to all. Before the industrial revolution, one person could process just 30 pounds of cacao per day. By the mid-19th century, Mahony says, a factory could produce up to one ton per day.
About this same time several other chocolate innovations appeared. French chocolate makers created the first chocolate-covered creams and fruits; the first chocolate bar was manufactured in 1847. Nineteen years later, Swiss chocolate maker Daniel Peter added condensed milk to make milk chocolate and milk chocolate turned the Western world into chocoholics.
Europeans and Americans found the taste irresistible. Mahony reports that between 1909 and 1927 consumption of cacao doubled to 466,500 tons.
Riding the creamy brown wave, companies like Cadbury, Rowntree, Bakers, Hershey and Nestle grew to be among the world's largest corporations in the 19th and 20th centuries and were among the first multinationals.
With no sign that the craving will subside, the companies should continue to prosper. Unless, of course, they add cornmeal and chili peppers again.