الشُّكَلاتة والكًاكَاو .. كتاب في سبيل موسوعة علمية .. الدكتور أحمد ذكي

Chocolate and cocoa

Chocolate is a food that people like, it is a pleasure, and along with the pleasure is nourishment. Thousands of people take it, in tablets or tablets wrapped in silver paper, and most of them do not know its origin or its origin.

Those who knew chocolate as a food would undoubtedly know cocoa as a hot, sweetened drink, which is also a pleasure and a source of nourishment.

The truth is that they are one thing, or they almost are.
They are all the same in origin.
Coffee is the flour of a tree seed, which is roasted before
grinding .
Likewise, chocolate and cocoa are both made from the flour of a tree’s seed, and they are also roasted and ground.

- the tree :

The tree is known as the cocoa tree, and it may also be called
With the chocolate tree.

Cacao is a Spanish pronunciation, taken from the name of this tree in its first homeland, from the Native Americans inhabiting Mexico, those who were known as the Aztec tribe, and they lived in America before Columbus discovered it and used cocoa as a drink. The Aztec pronunciation is Cacaucatl, and the English letter of this name became Cocoa. This is how they pronounce the name of this familiar drink.

We have thus revealed the homeland of this tree, and therefore the source from which cocoa and chocolate came for the first time, is tropical America.

Transporters transported the seeds of this tree to Africa. Western tropical plants, its cultivation was a great success, and these African regions now produce a third of the world’s need for seeds of this tree, and the seeds are transported to countries

(The cocoa tree grows tall until it reaches about 40 feet, but it is pruned to make it stand between 15 and 20 feet tall, so that its fruit will increase and it will grow long. Its leaves are large, thin, glossy, tending to red. The tree is small, and it turns green when it is large. It produces white flowers in It is red, coming out in groups directly from the trunk, or from the branches of the tree, and from the blossom the fruit comes out. And in the picture you see the man cutting the fruit with a long stick at the end of which is a wide, curved knife.)

Western industries, and to the United States in particular, to make chocolate and cocoa from it. Ghana, which is one of these African regions, receives half of its revenue from these seeds. Their prices fell in recent years, and their decline was a calamity for Ghana's economy.

Of course, cocoa was not known as a drink in the ancient world, nor was chocolate a dessert, until after the people of the West discovered the new world, America. Cocoa became a popular drink in Spain around 1580 AD. It entered England and France around the middle of the seventeenth century. Its first factory was established in the United States in 1765. The United States’ import of it increased century after century, until its annual import in 1950 reached 700 million pounds. The Americans are among the largest nations in manufacturing chocolate and cocoa, or perhaps they are the largest, and there is no doubt that they consume the most.

- The fruit:

The fruit of the cocoa tree is shaped like a cucumber, and comes directly from the trunk of the tree, or directly from its branches. Its harvesters are experienced, as they only harvest the fruit that is ripe. They cut it from its tree with sharp weapons. Women and children collect the fruits in large piles. The men split the fruit lengthwise, and the women and children usually behind them scoop out the seeds from the split core of the fruit, and throw away the peel and the liquid pulp contained within the seeds, which quickly hardens when it touches the air.