On Food and Cooking

Early Chocolate Confections For a couple of
centuries, Europe knew chocolate almost
exclusively as a beverage. The use of the
cacao bean in confectionery was quite limited.
The Englishman Henry Stubbe noted in his
treatise on chocolate, The Indian Nectar
(1662), that in Spain and the Spanish colonies
“there is another way of taking it made into
Lozenges, or shaped into Almonds,” and that
people were aware of what we now know to be
the effects of the caffeine in chocolate: “The
Cacao-nut being made into Confects, being
eaten at night, makes Men to wake all night-
long: and is therefore good for Souldiers, that
are upon the Guard.” Cookbooks of the 18th
century generally included a handful of
recipes that call for chocolate, among them
dragées, marzipans, and biscuits, creams and
ices and mousses. There are some remarkable
Italian recipes for lasagna sauced with
almonds, walnuts, anchovies, and chocolate,
for liver with chocolate, and polenta with