in commerce, a kind of paste or cake prepared of certain ingredients, the basis of which is cacao. See Cacao.
The Indians, in their first making of chocolate, used to roast the cacao in earthen pots; and having afterwards cleared it of the husks, and bruised it between two stones, they made it into cakes with their hands. The Spaniards improved this method. When the cacao is properly roasted and well cleaned, they pound it in a mortar, to reduce it into a coarse meal, which they afterwards grind on a stone till it be of the utmost fineness: the paste being sufficiently ground, is put quite hot into tin moulds, in which it congeals in a very little time. The form of these moulds is arbitrary; the cylindrical ones, holding two or three pounds, are the most proper, because the bigger the cakes are, the longer they will keep. Observe, that these cakes are very liable to take any good or bad scent, and therefore they must be carefully wrapped up in paper, and kept in a dry place. Complaints are made, that the Spaniards mix with the cacao nuts too great a quantity of cloves and cinnamon, besides other drugs without number, as musk, ambergris, &c. The grocers of Paris use few or none of these ingredients: they only choose the best nuts, which are called caraco, from the place from whence they are brought; and with these they mix a very small quantity of cinnamon, the freest vanilla, and the finest sugar, but very seldom any cloves. In England the chocolate is made of the simple cacao, excepting that sometimes sugar and sometimes vanilla is added.
Chocolate ready made, and cacao paste, are prohibited to be imported from any part beyond the seas. If made and sold in Great Britain, it pays inland duty 1s. 6d. per lb. avoiduponese: it must be inclosed in papers containing one pound each, and produced at the excise office to be stamped. Upon three days notice given to the officer of excise, private families may make chocolate for their own use, provided no less than half an hundred weight of nuts be made at one time.
The chocolate made in Portugal and Spain is not near so well prepared as the English, depending perhaps on the machine employed there, viz. the double cylinder, which seems very well calculated for exact trituration. If perfectly prepared, no oil appears on the solution. London chocolate gives up no oil like the foreign; and it also may in some measure depend on the thickness of the preparation. The solution requires more care than is commonly imagined. It is proper to break it down, and dissolve it thoroughly in cold water by milling it with the chocolate stick. If heat is applied, it should be done slowly; for, if suddenly, the heat will not only coagulate it, but separate the oil; and therefore much boiling after it is dissolved is hurtful. Chocolate is commonly required by people of weak stomachs; but often rejected for want of proper preparation. When properly prepared, it is easily dissolved; and an excellent food where a liquid nutritious vegetable one is required, and is less flatulent than any of the farinacea.
Mr Henley, an ingenious electrician, has lately discovered that chocolate, fresh from the mill, as it cools in the tin pans into which it is received, becomes strongly electrical; and that it retains this property for some time after it has been turned out of the pans, but soon loses it by handling. The power may be once or twice renewed by melting it again in an iron ladle, and pouring it into the tin-pans as at first; but when it becomes dry and powdery, the power is not capable of being revived by simple melting: but if a small quantity of olive-oil be added, and well mixed with the chocolate in the ladle, its electricity will be completely restored by cooling it in the tin-pan as before. From this experiment he conjectures, that there is a great affinity between carbonic acid and the electric fluid, if indeed they be not the same thing.
Chocolat Nut Tree. See Cacao.