Chocolate Against the Machine

Now, for the rest of the world…or at least Europe and consequently, South America. Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquests of both Spain and Portugal planted the perfect seed for civil unrest in their respective colonies. Revolutions, particularly in the Caribbean and Venezuela, caused the supply chains for cocoa and coffee beans to be interrupted, and sometimes severed, for a period of time.

Venezuela gained its independence of Spain, and other countries followed suit later. This posed a slight problem, because many of the landowners who had led the revolution had lost either their plantations, enslaved labor force, or both, to their rebellion. Also, Napoleonic ships blockaded most of the trade routes to South America, which harshly limited the imports to most of Europe. The production and trade of cacao took a sharp downturn for most of the eighteenth century. It wasn’t until the later part of the same century that chocolate production began to climb again.   

Due to the sparse supply of cocoa because of the Napoleonic wars raging throughout Europe and echoing across the Atlantic, the consumption of chocolate in Europe faced decline as well. Cocoa became a commodity only the wealthier social groups could afford to have. Even after the wars ended, the consumption of cocoa remained low for decades. Replacement drinks like tea and coffee took its place. They were cheaper to purchase and were able to be imported through the "back door" via Asia.

During this decline in consumption, new developments began to form around the manufacturing of cocoa. The most well-known story about these new-found advances is about a Dutch man named Coenraad van Houten. In 1828, van Houten created a process using a hydraulic press to extract the cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor, which is to say, the paste that forms as the cocoa beans are crushed. This method reduced the cocoa butter content in the chocolate liquor from 53% to 27%. The result was a cake that could then be powdered, and consequently sold for drinking chocolate. Van Houten also added alkaline salts to the mixture, which reduced the bitterness of the cocoa powder, and improved its absorbency in water. The term today is known as the “Dutch” process.

The cocoa butter that was skimmed away from the chocolate liquor did not have much use at the time that this process was developed. It wasn’t until much later that cocoa butter became a useful by-product of chocolate. During this time, cocoa butter was simply extracted from the chocolate liquor to make cocoa a less fatty substance.

In 1834, J. M. Lehmann, the gentleman who had helped Coenraad van Houten create his method resulting in cocoa powder, went into business himself, specializing in “cocoa pressing machinery,” (Moss, Badenoch 2009). Thanks to Mr. Lehmann, companies like Cadbury Brothers and J.S. Fry & Sons of Britain, and even Milton Snavely Hershey on the stateside, were able to buy hydraulic presses in order to improve their chocolate production.

With the hydraulic press, chocolate makers were able to separate out the cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor, and then reintroduce the cocoa butter into the mixture, creating a solid bar. Although it was a solid bar, it still had a pretty gritty texture, and it really wasn’t very popular.

This is where the Swiss come in to play. A few small merchants—a couple of which are well-known brands nowadays—began to perfect the processes for grinding and mixing chocolate into a homogenous mass. In 1879, the heir and son-in-law to Francois-Louis Cailler—Daniel Peter—invented a new flavor for chocolate by adding powdered milk to the mix; hence, milk chocolate was born. The brilliant invention of powdered milk was created by Peter’s fellow countryman, Henri Nestle. The Nestle Company now owns the firm of Cailler, Peter, and Kohler, which it acquired in 1929.  

Another great invention of this time came from chocolatier Rudolphe Lindt. He developed the process of conching, which is when the cocoa nibs—the innermost part of the cocoa bean—are placed in a large rotating granite basin, and two equally large granite rollers press the cocoa, heating it slowly with the friction inside the basin, creating a smooth paste called cocoa mass. This method yields more flavor from the cocoa beans, and the texture is much more even.

Other firms began to pick up this technique as well, and has become a fundamental step in chocolate-making. This method also created a way to reintroduce cocoa butter after it had been pressed out. By the end of the 19th century, almost every step of the chocolate-making process was mechanized. Also, this is when chocolate began to take on the familiar form we know and love now.

Moss, S.; Badenoch, A. (2009). Chocolate: A Global History. London: Reakton Books Ltd.

(2005). Venezuela: History. Infoplease. HighBeam Research, LLC. http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/world/venezuela-history.html

(2013). 1811: The Venezuelan Revolution. Prezi, Inc. http://prezi.com/8ws8iagizu7m/1811-the-venezuelan-revolution/