Chocolate, my sweet: A delicious history of the food of love

Americans are united and cheerful when it comes to chocolate. Most indulge at least once a week, with 72% feeling that “Chocolate belongs in a happy, balanced lifestyle,” according to a 2024 report by the National Confectioners Association (NCA).

In honor of the tradition of lovers exchanging chocolate on Valentine’s Day, here’s a look at the sweet treat’s history.

Q: How popular is chocolate?

Although global chocolate prices fluctuated wildly over the past year as the cost of cocoa nearly tripled, more than three-quarters of Americans enjoyed the same amount or a bit more than in the year before, with a strong preference for milk chocolate, the NCA report says. Chocolate accounted for 56% of all candy sales in the United States, for a whopping total of $21.4 billion. Globally, chocolate is a $120 billion industry.

This should surprise no one. Ancient Aztecs in Mesoamerica called the cacao bean a gift from the gods. Ancient Mayans used the beans as currency. In the 1600s, chocolate-drinking houses sprang up in England and its American colonies as places for political discussion and indulgence.

Q: Where does chocolate come from?

Chocolate is made from the cacao bean, grown in pods about the size of a football on trees across Central and South America, West Africa, parts of the Caribbean, and Asia. Bean tastes range from fruity to floral.

Before it became a confectionery treat shared between lovers, chocolate was consumed as a bitter drink. Once released from the pod, beans were separated from their pulpy outer coating, roasted, ground into a paste, mixed with water, sometimes flavored with chile peppers and honey, and served hot or cold. It was called chocolhaa by Mayans and xocolatl by Aztecs.

Spanish explorers discovered the drink in the 1500s and introduced it into European trading markets. Sweetened by additives such as sugar, milk, and cinnamon, chocolate increased in popularity quickly. As demand grew, so did European plantations across Latin America, fueled by the labor of enslaved Africans. To this day, labor groups work to combat forced child labor in chocolate production, primarily in West Africa.

Q: Who turned the cacao bean into a chocolate bar?

To make chocolate bars, you first need cocoa powder. That’s produced by removing the cacao bean shell after the bean has fermented and dried, and then using rollers to press out the fat in the bean – the cocoa butter – and pulverizing the remaining cocoa cakes into powder. Dutch chemist Coenraad Van Houten perfected this process by adding an alkalizing agent in 1828, a method known today as Dutch process cocoa.

English Quakers, notably the Fry and Cadbury families, became involved in the cocoa industry in the 19th century. In 1847, the Frys figured out how to blend cocoa powder with sugar and more cocoa butter, and then pour it into molds to make chocolate bars.

The Cadburys improved the cocoa butter extraction process for an even smoother, more palatable product – and an even wider variety of “eating chocolates.” In the 1860s, at the height of the Victorian-era Valentine’s Day craze, Richard Cadbury sold his family’s small, sweet morsels in elaborately decorated boxes. Emptied containers were used to store keepsakes such as letters.

Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter is credited with first combining cocoa powder and powdered milk to make milk chocolate in 1875. He and his neighbor Henri Nestlé created the first mass-produced milk chocolate.

Q: Who were America’s early chocolatiers?

In 1670, Dorothy Jones and Jane Barnard opened the country’s first coffee and chocolate houses in Boston. The first chocolate factory opened in 1764 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, grinding out cocoa paste into bars for baking, known today as Baker’s Chocolate. Italian immigrant Domingo Ghirardelli opened his chocolate factory in the 1850s in San Francisco. In 1894, Milton Hershey established the Hershey Chocolate Co. in Pennsylvania. Companies such as Mars, See’s, and Fannie May soon followed.

Q: What are the next trends in chocolate?

Cacao sourcing is important to younger consumers, the NCA reports. Many seek out chocolate produced by chocolatiers that deal directly with farmers, or they prefer fair-trade chocolate, in which intermediaries can be used but farmers still get a fair price.

A trend is also emerging toward plant-based or vegan chocolate that includes botanicals such as chamomile and lavender. This kinder, more equitable chocolate could make Valentine’s Day even sweeter.