by Macy Jamison
photography by Elizabeth Messina

       Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies,” claims humorist John Q. Tillius, and an oft-quoted unknown author echoes, “There are Four Basic Food Groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles.”
      Few foods elicit as much passion as chocolate. Chocolate is love, sensuousness and sweetness and a great gift for love celebrations such as your wedding. Chocolate can be incorporated as part of your table decor with the menu card or favor.  You can have truffles passed on trays when coffee is served or by giving chocolate to your guests as a parting gift. For the chocolate lovers, consider having a chocolate lounge where guests can enjoy champagne and chocolate throughout your wedding. Sharing gourmet chocolate with the one you love and all that come to celebrate your wedding is to say the least.....very sweet.
      Our love affair with chocolate goes back about 2,000 years when the cacao tree was discovered in the tropical rainforests of South America. The Mayans learned to harvest, ferment and roast the seed into a paste and mix it with water, chile peppers and cornmeal to make a spicy, bitter drink called cocoa. Cocoa was not just a favored delicacy; it played an important role in their spiritual and social lives. Cacao seeds were offered to the gods, and even served as money when the Mayan traded with the Aztecs.  The Aztec emperor Montezuma (c. 1480-1520) said of cacao, “This divine drink builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food.”
      After the conquest of Mexico in 1521, the Spanish conquistadors took cacao back to their homelands, and refined the brew’s texture with a technique called conching—consisting of mixing and heating—that gave the product its smoothness and removed its bitterness. Chocolate was invented. The Spaniards kept this delicacy a secret, and it was a hundred years before the rest of Europe discovered it. For the next 300 years, chocolate—the “food of the Gods,” as Carolus Linneaus called it in the 1700s—remained an elite beverage for Europe’s upper classes.  In time new inventions like the steam engine and the cocoa press made it possible to produce large amounts of chocolate inexpensively.
Cacao growing has not changed much since the Mayans discovered it.  Cacao is still harvested, fermented, dried and roasted by hand.  And, everywhere in the world, chocolate-makers or chocolatiers, continue to use their culinary expertise to create confections that are a feast for the palate.