Did our Ancestors Have Chocolate for the Spring Holidays?

This past weekend saw the overlapping of the Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter, and most of us celebrated by sharing special holiday meals and treats with our friends and families. Our ancestors likely did the same, but they may have approached their indulging in chocolates in different ways. One of the traditions you probably enjoyed with the children in your family was filling an Easter basket with chocolates or munching on specially prepared chocolate chip coconut macaroons after a Passover meal. Chocolate has always been special and for many reasons, which we will take a look at this week.

You may already know that chocolate comes from beans from the cacao tree, which is native to

South America. The Mayas and Incas called it "food from the gods" and considered it to be such an important commodity that they used it as a means of calculating amounts and as a form of payment. They brewed the beans into a drink they called "xocoatl," meaning bitter water, because like coffee, cacao in its natural form is not sweet at all. (Just taste cocoa powder!) The Aztecs further believed that one of their gods taught their ancestors how to roast and grind the cacao beans into a paste that could be dissolved in water and combined with spices and vanilla; they called this drink "chocolatl," and they thought it would bestow wisdom onto those who consumed it. (To the right: Aztec woman pouring liquid chocolate from one container to another so it will get frothy; image in the public domain)

When explorers from Europe began to land in the New World, they were exposed to the drink, but, at first, no one was particularly fond of it. Some attribute the rise of chocolate's popularity in Europe to the explorer Hernando Cortes, who visited Montezuma's court in Mexico in 1519. The chocolate drink he was offered in Central America was frothy, spicy, sweetened with vanilla, and served cold. He liked it! When he sailed back to Spain, Cortes brought chocolate with him and introduced it into the court of the king, Charles V. It was the Spanish, then, who thought to sweeten the drink with cane sugar and who decided it would taste even better if it were served hot. It didn't take long before the Spanish began planting cacao trees in their warm colonies, enslaved men and women to work the land, and put Spanish monks in charge of processing the beans.

Those monks were supposed to keep their crop and their processing of it a secret, but before too long, as people traveled through Spain and discovered the "secret brew," all of Europe knew about this tasty new drink. It was regaled for its health benefits and (likely because of the caffeine) as an aphrodisiac. Within the next century, liquid chocolate became the rage in the French court and by the mid-1600s, the English had opened chocolate houses, where the wealthy gathered to chat and sip. 

The early Spanish explorers also carried chocolate to Spain's colony in Florida, and by the 1700s, it had spread through the rest of the North American colonies. It was commonly consumed as a drink for breakfast, boiled with milk or water and only in later years sweetened with sugar. With the boycott of tea in place during the American Revolution, there was a ready audience for an alternative drink. It was patriotic to consume it instead of tea shipped from Europe, and chocolate became part of soldiers' rations and sometimes part of their salaries.

(Above: A cacao tree with pods; the seeds inside are turned into cocoa; image from Wikimedia Commons by Yuet Man Lee; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Cocoa_pods_on_the_cocoa_tree_%28Theobroma_cacao%29_inside_the_Shinjuku_Gyoen_Greenhouse.jpg)

From the Cup to the Plate

Chocolate was consumed only as a liquid until the 1670s, when it began to be used as an ingredient in cakes and sweet rolls. A century later, prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution, a British physician named Joseph Fry patented a steam engine to grind the cocoa beans, which began to revolutionize the manufacturing of chocolate products. Fry and Son, located in Bristol, England, sold the first chocolate bar about fifty years later, finally bringing chocolate to ordinary people and not just the rich. However, this first solid chocolate was gritty, and it wasn't until 1879 that a Swiss inventor, Rodolphe Lindt, developed a machine to smooth the liquid mixture, leading the way to mass production of modern chocolate candy.

And milk chocolate? That, too, began with a Swiss chocolatier, Daniel Peter, when he added dried milk powder to a batch of the still-gritty chocolate mixture in 1876. We aren't familiar with Peter's name, but we do know his business partner and friend, Henri Nestlé, and the company they created in the latter's name. When Lindt invented his machine to mix and aerate chocolate into creamy smoothness, they were on their way to success, followed by other family companies whose names you will recognize: Cadbury, Mars, and Hershey.

Chocolate for Easter and Passover

Once chocolate could be mass produced and tasted so delicious, it was just a matter of time before it popped up everywhere. The idea of the Easter bunny and all that Easter basket candy came to the U.S. with German immigrants, who also originated Easter eggs. The rabbit was a symbol of new life, and those early colorful Easter eggs were a symbol of fertility and good luck. It didn't take long for the eggs to be joined by a wide variety of rabbits, chicks, birds, nests, and more. 

(To the right: Making Easter eggs in the Fuerst Kramer shop, New Orleans, 1917; image in the public domain)

The Jewish holiday of Passover also celebrates the continuation of life but places restrictions on what observant Jews can eat. The holiday honors the exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, but they had to flee so quickly that their bread was unable to rise. Hence, observant Jews do not eat anything with a leavening agent in it for the week-long holiday. Many chocolate products contain additives, and most are produced in facilities that might have processed other ingredients not considered Kosher for Passover. However, chocolate in its purest form is perfectly fine, and there are many companies that produce chocolate especially for the holiday that helps make for tasty Passover desserts. You won't find Easter bunnies or chocolate eggs in Jewish homes, but you might find chocolate-covered matzoh or succulent chocolate macaroons instead.

Some Fun Chocolate Facts:

1. People have been drinking chocolate for more than 3,500 years.
2. Benjamin Franklin sold drinking chocolate from his printing shop in Philadelphia.
3. Meriwether Lewis wrote about drinking chocolate for health reasons in 1806.
4. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in 1865, his guests enjoyed a solid chocolate pyramid, chocolate ice cream, and a chocolate drink.
5. In a cookbook printed for the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, Sarah Tyson Rorer included recipes for both cooking with chocolate and drinking it iced.
6. And on a tragic note, in 1912, chocolate was on the menu of the Titanic, and in 1915, jugs for serving hot chocolate were aboard the ill-fated Lusitania.

Learn more:

"History of Chocolate," History.com, https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-chocolate.

"The Fry Family, Chocolate Makers," Quakers in the World, https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/276/The-Fry-Family-Chocolate-Makers.

"The Sweet History of Chocolate Eggs for Easter," by Sabrina Shearer, Chocolate StoryBook, 28 March 2023, https://chocolatestory.com/chocolate-easter-eggs-history/?srsltid=AfmBOopMHV68HAvRhCR7MCKSS-jST6lN_8esD7Jt5j4BKtx7gRY0bsgc.

"Who Invented Chocolate Bars?" by Gemma Whitaker, Whitakers Chocolates, 2026, https://www.whitakerschocolates.com/blogs/blog/who-invented-chocolate-bars?srsltid=AfmBOooGBr0YZklUFdbjTBFRiBqve-hK9lyAAkyE-YnRngA9awt4LBuQ