Like all good chocolate, we will be savouring this book and read the first half (up through page 124) in October and the second half (page 125 through the end) in November.
The book is co-authored by Sophie Coe, who died before completing the work, and her husband, Michael Coe. Micael Coe was a respected Mayanist and much of the discussion of the Maya and Aztec use of chocolate as well as the European conquest in the first four chapters of the book must owe much to him.
More about Sophie Coe may be found here.
And in the LA Times ‘Appreciation’ on the occasion of her death.
There is also a Sophie Coe award for food writing and her collection of food and cookbooks is at her alma mater, Radcliffe.
More about Michael Coe may be found here.
You have only to type ‘chocolate’ or ‘history of chocolate’ or ‘chocolate recipes’ or even ‘savory chocolate recipes’ to find billions and trillions of pages devoted to … chocolate.
So, I did not do a thoughtful, careful winnowing of thousands or even hundreds of sites but here is an approximately 42 minute video of the history of chocolate.
It seems to cover much the same information in the first four chapters of the book so if you haven’t had time to read the book, you might want to watch this. What I also appreciate very much about this video (in contrast to some of the others I scanned) is that toward the bottom of the grey box with information about the video there is a sources and bibliography document you can download to check into the concepts in the video in more detail.
Cacao varieties.
It was my understanding that there are basically three varieties that are accepted; however, some sites differ although some sites agree. Note that these are not species differences and seem to a large extent to be due to differences in flavor more associated with location. And, as some of the recent scientific papers I’ve scanned suggest, the differences show up in DNA analyses.
ICCO for info about varieties.
Philippine Cacao Industry Council: A bilingual presentation (2:28:41):
starts at about 26 min 2024 conference highlights
53:30 botany and biology
56:16 cacao types
57:28 details
Cacao as an agricultural crop in India. At about 4 minutes he talks about the different varieties.
As for the tree itself.
Time lapse of growing the tree. (Sure looks like an avocado…) (2:40)
A Kew Gardens video (5:11)
Care information from Logees.
How to grow in containers also from Logees.
It seems that grafting is a pretty big deal with cacao and seedlings are used to generate the root stock.
Grafting techniques
This video is from one of the Philippine universities. My sense is this would rather like our extension services. It shows from seed preparation through two styles of grafting. (7:24)
Another take on grafting – in the field and more or less on the fly, I would say. (2:47)
Mesoamerican history
This 12:40 video traces the history of all the various groups that rose to and fell from power in Mesoamerica. It’s helpful to keep all the groups sorted out temporally.
And there’s the question of language and how we came to call chocolate chocolate. The following are from a channel called NativLang which discusses many languages and is quite interesting. For those with some linguistics background, the explanations are fascinating.
Language: (11:52) This one includes references and credits.
What Montezuma’s Aztec sounded like – includes chocolate.
One might ask if I’m a total language nerd (well, yes, but…) This video shows the way in which some of these glyphs continue to appear and to be relevant today.
Modern use of glyphs: (5:30)
A three hour video, The History of America Before Colonization Explained: 1491, might be an interesting history.
I say might be because as I search for general history of the area I am learning that fact checking does not seem to be high on the list of skills for a narrator (a soothing voice, impressive music, and stunning photography seem to carry the day. So caveat emptor on most of the history you watch online. This one includes an “award-winning” podcast and seems to be reliable. This is not focused on our area and not on chocolate (no wonder some of the comments are that the narrator’s voice is so soothing it was easy to fall asleep.) Of course, no one is likely to fall asleep watching anything about chocolate because whoever is watching chocolate is surely eating and drinking it at the same time!