The Surprising History of Chocolate

In this video, we take a look at the origins of chocolate, cocoa, and cacao, and explore how it was made, how it spread, and how it was used throughout history.

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The following music performed by Kevin Macleod Available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G, Movement I (Allegro), BWV 1049 [orig. by JS Bach]
Accralate

These songs provided by the YouTube audio library

Mandarhu – River of Life
Spanish Rose
Beijaflor
Vacation Casual
Invitation to The Castle Ball

Picture attributions

[CHASEDPIE]

Just woke up, still have not left the bathtub. Open my phone and sees a new fire of learning video. This is gonna be a good day

[EfrLuviano]

I am Mexican, we are actually taught a decent amount of this in school, nice to see people being interested in this

[rey.del.guac.]

Chocolate! My favourite fruit!

Thank you Fire of Learning for shedding more light on this rare unpopular fruit!

[connormarvell]

Just finished work for a new Fire of Learning video to walk home to. Living the dream

[alonzoson]

I just finished making a cup of hot cocoa, perfect timing.

[tommyssl]

There's a shop in Sicily which has been around since the Spanish ruled the island and still makes chocolate the same way from then, which may be the only way we can taste what Aztec chocolate would be like.

[lisapop]

White chocolate on eggs with mustard? I can't imagine how that concoction gets discovered 😂

[higginswalsan]

I believe white chocolate counts as chocolate due to cocoa butter (at least to my knowledge) not being a common food additive outside of chocolate products

[spaghettiking]

Finally! The time is here! I always knew this day would come!

[kimmuckenfuss]

Thanks so much for this video! I'd been curious in the past about chocolate & its' origins, & knew a lot of what you mentioned, but I was not clear at all about the Dutch versions & the alkalizing, etc. You've definitely cleared that up for me!

[jaynorris]

Chocolate melted on peanut butter toast for dinner. Thank you for the new information.

[imaniwork]

Thank you for the excellent work on the history of cocoa,
looking forward for the history of tea,
please do The History of Tobacco.

[BaronVonQuiply]

In 2005 I had acquired some leaves of a tree with extreme tannin levels. I was using 12 spoons of sugar to combat the bitterness of the tea made with it. Looking for a better solution, I recalled how Chocolatl was prepared with chili peppers as sugar was not available, and so I added cinnamon to the tea reasoning that it was in the same general "hot" family. Not only did it work, but the tannin bitterness is mostly in the aftertaste and cinnamon hits in the aftertaste as well so it was a double attack on bitter.

[micoolkidfilms]

Thank god for uploading I’ve been suffering from fire of learning withdrawal

[cebonvieuxjack]

Fun fact : every french soldier in WW1 had their own personal can of powdered chocolate to make themselves a chocolat chaud in the trenches.

[of]

My favorite YouTube channel! Keep up the good work sir

[aviation_and_things]

"White chocolate with scrambled eggs and mustard is quite good"
This guy is a menace to society

[skybluskyblueify]

Are there any books on the history of cacao/chocolate you recommend? BTW I loved the book you recommended for the history of potatoes.

[realmonologue]

I’m interested in the history of the coconut or the olive, if that’s possible

[Silverphoenix]

Holy hell did you say white chocolate with mustard and scrambled eggs sounds like a monstrosity I'm going to have to try, thanks man, i hope i don't die