![]() ![]() #Olmec civilization full#The naturally bitter flavor of cacao came through at full strength in early Maya recipes. Perhaps, one theory holds, someone was eating the fruit and spitting seeds into the fire, and the rich smell of them roasting inspired the thought that “maybe there’s something more we could do with this.” “How would you think to take the seed, harvest it, dry it, let it ferment, and roast it? It’s not something you would normally think to do,” Lavis said. In their raw state, plucked from tangy-sweet, gummy white flesh lining a large pod shaped like a Nerf football, cacao seeds are bitter and unrecognizable as chocolate to a modern American palate. “There’s so much rich history that we’re just beginning to understand. They think of Belgian chocolate,” says Lavis. “When you think of chocolate, most people don’t think of Mesoamerica. “There is no written history for the Olmecs,” he said, but pots and vessels uncovered from this ancient civilization show traces of the cacao chemical theobromine. The Olmecs of southern Mexico were probably the first to ferment, roast, and grind cacao beans for drinks and gruels, possibly as early as 1500 B.C., said Hayes Lavis, a cultural arts curator for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. The tools and flavors have changed, but the work of roasting and grinding fermented cacao beans, and mixing them with a few simple ingredients to create a divine food, is a practice that goes back to early Mesoamerican civilizations. This is the home of Dandelion Chocolate, a small-batch chocolate maker founded in 2010 by two former tech entrepreneurs. ![]() After three days of gentle mixing, the buttery smooth results will be transferred to a tempering machine to shape the cacao’s natural fat molecules into stable crystal structures. Cacao beans that have been fermented, dried, roasted, shelled, and ground tumble with sugar in a row of shiny metal mixers. On a sunny morning in San Francisco's Mission District, half a dozen men and women scoot around a tiny chocolate factory, wrapping bars, checking temperature settings, sorting beans. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |