From Bean to Bar: The Six Steps That Make Chocolate
Fermentation, drying, roasting, winnowing, conching, tempering. Most of chocolate's flavour is created after the pod is picked — and most of it in the first week.
The Chocolate Journal
Where chocolate came from, how it is made, and why the bar in your hand is a surprisingly recent invention.
Chocolate Comes to Britain: Chocolate Houses, Quakers and the First Bar
Britain met chocolate as a fashionable drink in 1657, then spent two centuries turning it into something you could put in your pocket. Quaker families did most of the turning.
When Chocolate Was Money: Cacao in the Aztec Economy
For centuries, a cacao bean was small change across Mesoamerica. You could buy a turkey with a hundred of them — and people forged them.
The Origins of Chocolate: From Bitter Drink to Sweet Bar
Chocolate spent roughly 90% of its history as a drink, and most of that unsweetened. Here is how a bitter Mesoamerican beverage became the bar in your pocket.