A
m I alone in hoping, any
time a chocolate factory is
mentioned, that it really
might contain a chocolate
river, rooms full of
snozzberries, or banks of
nut-testing squirrels? Brought up on Roald
Dahl’s classic, Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, I pray that somewhere, somehow,
it really could be true. Anyone who has
lived within sniffing distance of a major
producer will know that it doesn’t really
seem that far-fetched – blown on the wind,
that sweet, warming scent of chocolate
can transform the dullest day into a
whipple-scrumptious fudgemallow delight.
Dahl’s book was inspired by his
imaginings of what might be going on
within Cadbury’s chocolate factory at
Bournville, the very factory that sent him
and his fellow pupils at Repton public
school unmarked boxes of chocolates to
taste and comment on – greedy schoolboys
being a prime target for the company’s new
inventions. “It was then I realised that
inside... there must be an inventing room,
a secret place where fully grown men and
women in white overalls spent all theirtime playing around with sticky boiling
messes, sugar and chocs,” he later wrote.
He wasn’t wrong. The 1930s were the
heyday of chocolate innovation. Though
the peoples of Mesoamerica had been
enjoying the fruits of the cacao tree for
centuries, they enjoyed it as an invigorating
drink. This custom eventually made its
way to Europe, after Spanish conquistador
Hernán Cortés had witnessed it being
drunk, out of cups of pure gold, by the great
Aztec ruler Montezuma in 1519. But where
the Aztecs preferred their chocolate with a
kick, mixing it with water, chilli and
cornmeal – and occasionally ground-up
human bones for added vigour – the
Spaniards added sugar and f lavourings
such as cinnamon, cloves and rosewater.
Chocolate houses sprung up in cities all“That sweet, warming
scent of chocolate can
transform the dullest day
into whipple-scrumptious
Why we really fudgemallow delight”
love chocolate
Let us count the ways...1 It’s mainly fat and sugar which,
in milk chocolate at least, is
found in proportions of 1:2, fat/
sugar. This is rarely found in
nature, other than in human
breast milk, suggesting we are
hard-wired to enjoy it.
2 It contains a cocktail of
caffeine and other chemicals,
albeit in trace amounts, which
are thought to stimulate our
senses, lift our mood and
even counter pain.
3 The silky texture and
mouthfeel are pleasing so that
eating some is a physical joy.
4 The darker and less processed
you eat your chocolate, the more
likely it’ll be actively good for
you, packed full of antioxidants
and anti-inflammatories.72
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