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Chocolate is made from the cacao bean, which comes from cocoa plants. Cocoa plants can only grow near the equator. Cocoa plants grow in the Philippines, but a lot of the chocolate that's available in the market is imported from companies such as Nestle and Cadbury. These companies source their cacao beans from plantations in the Ivory Coast, which is where 40% of the world's chocolate comes from.
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The sweet pulp of the cacao fruit is fermented into an alcoholic beverage
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Cacao beans are used as currency; 100 beans could be exchanged for a turkey hen
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Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes arrives in Mexico Legend says the Aztec king Montezuma mistook Cortes for a deity and welcomed him with a banquet with chocolate
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a Spanish galleon transported pure Mesoamerican Criollo, a type of cacao plant, across the Pacific from Acapulco, Mexico to the Philippines
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Mixed with honey or sugar, chocolate is fashionable throughout Europe Heavily taxed, it was mostly a privilege for the wealthy class
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The steam engine made mass production possible
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As the demand for cocoa grew, cocoa plantations were established in the West Indies, Asia and Africa and the price of cocoa beans gradually began to fall as greater quantities came onto the market.
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John Cadbury opens a grocer’s shop at 93 Bull Street, Birmingham. Among other things, he sold cocoa and drinking chocolate, which he prepared himself using a pestle and mortar.
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Coenraad van Houten, a Dutch chemist, discovers a way to make powdered chocolate - this is known as Dutch cocoa.
He did this by removing half of the natural fat (cacao butter) from chocolate liquor, then treating the mixture with alkaline salts to cut the bitter taste. -
Joseph Fry discovers that you can make moldable chocolate paste by adding melted cacao buter back into Dutch cocoa.
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German pharmacist Henri Nestle launches milk chocolate.
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As of 2015, 80 percent of the Philippine's chocolate comes from Davao
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Cocoa is produced in countries in a belt between 10ºN and 10ºS of the Equator, where the climate is appropriate for growing cocoa trees. The largest producing countries are Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Indonesia.
