chocolate was probably the coarse, crumbly
texture of the chocolate paste. The suave
confections that are so popular today were
made possible by several innovations, the first
of which came in 1828. Conrad van Houten,
whose family ran a chocolate business in
Amsterdam, was trying to find a way to make
chocolate less oily so that the drink would be
less heavy and filling. The weight of the cacao
bean is better than half fat, or “cocoa butter.”
Van Houten developed a screw press that
removed most of the cocoa butter from the
ground bean — in itself, not a novelty — and
then sold the defatted cocoa powder, which
carries nearly all the flavor, for making hot
chocolate. Cocoa powder was a long-lasting
success, though recently there has been a
revival of interest in richer versions of hot
chocolate full of cocoa butter.
At first, the pure cocoa butter extracted by
Van Houten’s screw press was a mere by-
product. But it turned out to be the key to the
barry
(Barry)
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