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Chocolate making has become one of the great industries of America. When, one day, shortly after the fall of his kingdom, Montezuma raised a golden cup to his lips, for refreshment, be introduced a new drink to the world, and that beverage was chocolate. Bernard Diaz, one of the Spanish officers with Cortez, observed the monarch, and in the history he afterward wrote of the conquest of Mexico, he described the king's act and its effect. Thus it came about that when the Spaniards took ship for Cadiz, they bore with them not only a yellow metal but a dark-brown nut from which chocolate was made. This knowledge of chocolate making by the Spaniards was kept a secret for many years, but it finally crossed the Pyrenees into France, and spread throughout Europe. The manner in which the fame of the beverage was diffused is interesting. In the refectories of the Spanish monasteries chocolate had become such a favorite beverage that the monks, wishing to remember their brothers in France in an especially friendly way, sent them presents of the cocoa beans. Thus it was that when the daughter of Philip III. went to Paris as the wife of Louis, XIII., she bore with her from Madrid the news of the new drink from America. Next the Puritans took it with them to Massachusetts Bay. Since then, chocolate has become a household word in the length and breadth of the United States. The first chocolate mill was established at Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1765. This mill, 15 years later, became the property of Dr. James Baker. Later, the establishment passed into the control of Walter Baker. Others afterward succeeded both Bakers, and a man named Pierce, in this concern. In 1860 there were consumed in the United States 1,181,054 pounds of chocolate and cocoa. In 1902, the consumption had grown to 48,785,688 pounds, a stupendous increase of 4,030 per cent in 42 years. During the same period, the population of the country increased only 151 per cent. But what of the product itself? To drive down the hill from Milton, Massachusetts, past the chocolate mills, is to inhale deep aromatic odors, that lead you to imagine that you are skirting the domains of "Araby the Blest." Within the mills there is a "spick" and "spanness" that make the aroma even more delicious, for they seem to fill it with a fresh and wholesome cleanliness. The whole theory of the process in the mills is that the cocoa bean is a product of nature, and that what it needs is refining and purifying, just as gold needs refining to be brought to the pure ingot.
Next comes the roasting, a most important operation, upon which depends to a great extent the flavor of the beans. Too little roasting leaves them crude and underflavored, while too much tends to make them bitter. This process is carried on in the upper stories of the mills, the cleansed seeds being put into large cylindrical roasters, holding a ton each. These machines keep the seeds in constant motion over hot pipes, for about three hours. When they are "done to a turn" they are dropped through big hoppers to the floor below; there they are broken into small fragments. The shells, already loosened by the roasting process, are then removed by ingenious winnowing machines, where the bean fragments are fanned within screens, and the light shells neatly separated from the solid fragments of the beans. The manipulation of these winnowing machines requires experience and care, for a workman may easily blow away his salary by admitting too much current to the fans. These shells, once separated, are ready to be packed in boxes and placed on the market. Cocoa shells are well-known and widely used, making a palatable and inexpensive drink, with a slight flavor of chocolate about it. The cracked cocoa, freed from the shells, is now destined to be turned into chocolate without further ado. This is accomplished by a process of grinding. From the winnowing floor the cleaned fragments drop another story, again through capacious hoppers, down to the great grinding rooms. Stretching away in seemingly endless ranks, stand big, gleaming, intricate machines, which receive the cocoa beans as they are fed into the hoppers above, and grind them into a fine, smooth paste, or thick liquid. As this liquid flows thickly out at the bottom of the burnished grinder, it falls, if it is to be a plain chocolate, into oblong molds, which give it the form familiar to housekeepers. It is now in the molds, but not yet molded. For that purpose, it must be carried into a room which seems to be nothing but noise. This is the room of the automatic molders. If the chocolate were pressed into the molds, it would merely stick to the presser mold and all; so, instead, it is shaken in. The pasty lump of chocolate in its metal mold is put into a wooden tray on a table, which is shaken by steam, and makes the molds bob up and down in a most deafening manner. After the chocolate is fitted to the mold, it is carried off to the cooling rooms. In making sweetened chocolate, pure sugar is added in a certain proportion, before molding, and also the finest quality of vanilla beans, if it is to be vanilla chocolate. In the manufacture of breakfast cocoa, a portion of the oil of the chocolate bean is removed by hydraulic pressure, and the pressed mass remaining is ground into minute particles. This process is continued until a high degree of fineness has been obtained. CINNAMON The cinnamon plant or tree is raised most readily from seeds, although the finer kinds are propagated in Ceylon by layers. The wood of the tree is light. The branches are thick and spreading, and shoot forth horizontally or inclining downwards, with numerous oblong leaves growing in pairs opposite to each other. The cinnamon berry is small and has the form of an olive, with a kernel. It adheres to a thick green and hexangular receptacle in the manner of an acorn. The peeling process commences early in May and continues until late in October. Two longitudinal slits are made in the bark, which is gradually loosened with the convex side of a knife, and then half of its circumference usually comes off in one entire slip. The epidermis, together with the greenish pulpy matter immediately under it, is carefully scraped off. When sufficiently dry, it is made up into bundles weighing about 30 pounds each. Ceylon alone has 37,000 acres of land devoted to the cultivation of cinnamon. It is grown to some extent in China, and several species of the plant in a wild state are found in Java. ALSKA |
