Christopher Columbus “discovered” cacao almost exactly 500 years ago, yet had no idea of the value of that discovery.  Half a century later, cacao made its way to the court of Spain and almost literally disappeared from the written histories of Europeans in the New World. But cacao did not vanish from the New World. By the eighteenth century there was a thriving trade in cocoa between South America and Caribbean ports and ports all along the Eastern Seaboard of North America, from Boston to Philadelphia and south to the Carolinas.

In most histories, the story of chocolate in the colonies begins ...

... in Massachusetts in 1765 with the founding of what is now known as the Baker’s Chocolate Company (now a part of Kraft Foods). Explains Jim Gay, a member of the Historic Foodways department of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and whose area of research is chocolate in colonial America, “While Baker’s may be the oldest brand of chocolate in America, they were by no means the first. There are records of cocoa trading and chocolate consumption that date back to the late-1600s.”

The first chocolate makers in North America were millers and one of the earliest known chocolate mills was in Salem, MA. Milling was an important technology, and many towns were founded around a grist mill, which could just as easily grind “cocoa nuts” as well as wheat, corn, rye, and other grains. Many of the earliest chocolate makers could be found in Boston and New York City and there is a strong correlation between its port and the island of Curacao, also owned by the Dutch (the Dutch traded New Amsterdam to the British for the colony of Surinam and renamed it New York).

A surprising number of the earliest chocolate makers were Portuguese Sephardic Jews who were heavily involved in trade in the Caribbean. (The Inquisition forced Jewish chocolate makers living in Spain to flee to France, and Bayonne on the southwest coast is the ancestral home of chocolate in France.) English Quakers were also among the earliest chocolate makers, in part because of the sorry reputation of millers, who were assumed to adulterate their grindings. Early chocolate advertisements emphasized “purity,” a Quaker ethic.

“Chocolate became an important beverage in Colonial America,” says Jim, “about the time of the Boston Tea Party, when it became unpatriotic to drink tea. Both chocolate and coffee became popular. In the colonies, chocolate was much less expensive than in Britain where imported cocoa was highly taxed (there were no such import duties in the colonies). British chocolate was affordable only to very few and demand was low.

“Where there was only one British chocolate maker [editor’s note: the Fry family] in 1776, there were 50 or more in the colonies with 20 to 25 located in Philadelphia alone. Even Ben Franklin sold chocolate in his print shop.”

Chocolate manufacturing in New England, New York and Philadelphia was done on an industrial scale—over 127,000 pounds were exported in 1773—and was generally available to the middle class in the all the colonies. From Maryland and points south, chocolate was imported from Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In Virginia, however, a few wealthy individuals owned slaves who hand ground chocolate using “chocolate stones” (i.e., metates). These enslaved people probably came from somewhere in the Caribbean and learned their chocolate making there. It is this hand grinding technique that Jim demonstrates.

According to Jim, “The history of chocolate in America has not been written yet. We have to look deeper into the social context it fits in, learn about the families of chocolate makers, of labor and labor relations, and of technology. For example, how did they shell the beans? were they hand-peeled or cracked and winnowed? How many hands does it take to shell and clean 500-600 pounds of roasted cocoa beans? How is it possible to scale the technology up to produce over 60 tons of chocolate for export and who knows how many tons for local consumption? What does the packaging look like?”

Winnowing cocoa beans at Colonial Williamsburg

For Jim, who has been known to make chocolate ice cream using a recipe first published in 1772 with the chocolate he makes, the aspect of learning to make chocolate that surprised him most is the inconsistency of flavor from batch to batch. He was also surprised that the difference between under roasted and over roasted beans is a very fine line, sometimes literally just a few seconds. When you combine that with variations in the weather (especially humidity) it’s very difficult to make a consistent product. “We use only criollo beans from Venezuela to make the chocolate in our demonstrations,” said Jim, “we don’t do any blending. I can’t imagine how anyone could have made a consistent-tasting product back then using just the beans they could buy and the tools they had. There is no evidence for blending to achieve a more consistent flavor.”

Jim Gay roasting cocoa beans at Colonial Williamsburg

Jim laughs when he tells me that the question children ask him most about the chocolate he makes is, “Can I have a taste?” Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is, “No.” Many people think that the reason for this policy is because of liability concerns and insurance. However, the historically accurate reason for not giving samples out is, as Jim explained, that chocolate was not consumed by children in colonial Virginia because it was a beverage and not a food and it was viewed as a stimulant and aphrodisiac and so only suitable for adults. “Children in colonial Virginia would have much more likely been served beer,” Jim added.

Grinding cocoa beans over a metate at Colonial Williamsburg

Jim, whose first career was as a Naval aviator, studied to become a high school history teacher. As a student teacher he discovered that he did not like the classroom setting. After a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, he got a job as a general “interpreter” leading tour groups and doing demonstrations, eventually joining the Historic Foodways department. For Jim, the most rewarding aspect of the job is teaching living history. “If I can hook them on the history of chocolate, then I can hook them on history. There are lots of fascinating questions about chocolate that haven’t been answered and, let’s face it, we would not be having this conversation about broccoli.”

If you’re interested in seeing for yourself how chocolate was made in colonial Virginia, Jim gives public demonstrations of chocolate making the first Tuesday of every month from September through June. Visit the web site for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to plan your trip.

Grinding cocoa beans during a demonstration at Colonial Williamsburg

If you can, book your stay in one of the many restored colonial-era houses scattered around the property, take the kids, and try not to visit during a school holiday—it will be far less crowded. They sell “reproduction” chocolate bars in some of the shops, but they are ordinary tasting at best; try a period chocolate dessert in one of the restaurants instead.

Photos ©Copyright 2004 Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

This article first appeared in the October 2004 issue of The New World Chocolate Society Newsletter in Chocolatier Magazine.