History of chocolate in Berkshires is both rich and delicious

By Kate Abbott12:00AM / Friday, June 06, 2003Print Story | Email Story

In September of 1750, Jonathan Edwards, second missionary at the Stockbridge Mission, sent an order to Boston for seven pounds of chocolate and something illegible. Lion Miles of Stockbridge found the entry in the account book of Jonathan Edwards, at Yale University. This may be the earliest record of chocolate in the Berkshires. It would have been a cake of crushed, refined cocoa beans: about 54 percent cocoa butter, and the rest the caffeine-rich essence of chocolate. (Taking the cocoa butter from crushed cocoa beans leaves cocoa powder.) Edwards would have drunk his chocolate, mixed with water and possibly a sweetener or other flavoring, and probably cold. By 1801, the better-to-do residents of Stockbridge could buy the same chocolate at the local general store. Barbara Allen, curator of the Stockbridge Historical Collection, and the Day Book No. 3 of Williams and Hopkins General Merchandise, give evidence: Dr. Erastus Sergeant, son of John Sergeant, who founded the mission, bought a cake of chocolate July 27, 1801. Theodore Sedgewick Esq. bought chocolate and coffee Sept. 9 of the same year. Daniel Pipoon, son of Silas Pipoon, who ran the town bar, bought himself a cake of chocolate Sept. 16. One cake of chocolate cost about the same as a quart of rum or a yard and a half of calico at a time when customers regularly paid off their store credit in cheeses or firewood, or by working on the local roads for a couple of days. Theobroma Cacao has been in high demand throughout its history. Theobroma, the Latin name for the cocoa beanâ€™s tree, means â€œfood of the gods.â€ Cacao was an Olmec word, from a civilization that lived in Central America before the Mayan people. Cacao residue recently found on a Mayan pot has proved that the Maya were drinking chocolate as early as 600 B.C. The origins of chocolate The Maya and Aztecs cultivated groves of cacao trees. They traded cocoa beans in the markets of Mayan princes, and used them for currency. They would have pounded the seeds into a paste, a rich mixture of cocoa butter and cocoa liquor, and formed into fist-sized cakes. To serve it, they whipped it with water and flavorings: vanilla, honey, cinnamon, chilies, pita juice, or maize if they were poorer. They whisked it or poured it from one vessel to another, until it developed a creamy head, and drank it cold. Montezuma II, who introduced it to the Spanish conquistadors, drank 50 cups a day. Columbus discounted the value of cocoa beans. CortÃ©s brought some back to Charles V of Spain in 1528, but Spain did not wake up to the lure of chocolate for the better part of a century; the conquistadors hoarded the secret for themselves until 1580. Spain guarded chocolate from the rest of Europe so well that ships looting Spanish galleons threw the shipments of cocoa beans overboard as worthless. Within Spain, however, ladiesâ€™ maids interrupted morning masses to bring their mistresses their morning chocolate. The church debated hotly whether it could be drunk during fasting. Eventually, the Spanish began to add sugar to their drinking chocolate, as well as aniseed, cinnamon, almonds and hazelnuts. In 1606, a Florentine merchant brought the recipe for chocolate to Italy. Italian doctors began to prescribe chocolate as a restorative. Monks spread chocolate across Austria in 1640. It reached England in 1657. In 1671, David Chaillon became the first chocolatier in France when he opened a chocolate house in Paris. These establishments, providing hot drinks and hot political discussions, flourished along with coffee houses, across Europe. London had several by 1700. Apothecaries began to establish factories to make medicinal chocolate, about the same time. Chocolate was still a rich paste of cocoa butter and chocolate liquor, a source of caffeine and possible indigestion. It fortified Napoleon, as it had fortified Aztec armies for centuries. The British navy drank chocolate made from a slab form of this rich paste until the 1970s. Back in the 1670s, inventions began to appear to refine it â€” water mills and home chocolate makers and additives. Only in 1828 did the Dutchman Coenraad Van Houten discover a way of separating much of the cocoa butter from the liquor. He invented cocoa powder, and opened the way for solid chocolate. This solid chocolate might be sweetened or bitter, but would always have been what people call â€œdarkâ€ chocolate today. Daniel Peter did not invent milk chocolate until 1875, in Switzerland. Swiss milk chocolate is still famous. Belgian milk chocolate, also widely recognized, has a higher cream content than the Swiss chocolate, and melts more easily. (This makes it an especially fine candidate for todayâ€™s hot chocolate. Some Berkshire grocery stores sell Belgian chocolate in blocks. It shaves easily too. Try an ounce or two, heated in milk, with a dash of cream and liqueur.) Preparation of Chocolate The cacao grows in many places, but only within 20 degrees of the equator. The roughly 2,700,000 tons of cacao beans people consume every year come from nurseries and plantations cleared from the rainforest in South and Central America and Africa. Cacao growers often plant the trees under banana or rubber trees and prune them at about 20 feet high, so the harvesters can reach the cacao pods. The trees will bear fruit when they are 3 to 5-years-old. On plantations, trees generally bear for 30 to 40 years, and then are replaced, but they can grow up to 60 feet high, on their own, and bear fruit for 100 years. A cacao generally has only 10 to 20 pods. One pod produces about two ounces of seeds. Cacao fruits grow close to the trunk of the tree. They turn red or yellow when ripe. The long, tapered pods encase white, cream or lavender seeds in white or pink pulp. Cacao growers harvest the fruits with a blade on a long pole, break the pods open with a machete and collect the pulpy seeds in mounds or pits. The pulp ferments and liquefies in two or three days, and the seeds turn purple. They lose their bitter taste and develop essential oils. The growers collect the seeds and let them ferment for up to ten days more, until they turn dark brown. They then dry the beans, in the sun or over fires. Roasting the cocoa beans brings out their chocolate flavor. conching, or crushing them, generates enough heat to liquefy the cocoa butter. Manufacturers remove some cocoa butter to form a paste, chocolate liquor, that transforms into eating chocolate. Or they remove more cocoa butter and grind the liquor to a powder. They add sugar to make sweetened chocolates: sweet, semi-sweet, bittersweet, and add milk to make milk chocolate. White chocolate is cocoa butter with milk and sugar added. In Europe, manufacturers are strictly limited in the amount of vegetable fat other than cocoa butter, if any, they can use in making chocolate. In the United States, they are not. U.S. manufacturers have been known to make imitation chocolate from powdered cocoa and vegetable fat other than cocoa butter â€” palm kernel, coconut, cottonseed or soy oil â€” and even some synthetic chocolates with no real cocoa in them. Modern manufacturers often blend different cocoa beans in their chocolate. Proportions, temperature, timing and processing contribute to flavor. A search in the Stockbridge Library catalog brought up a relatively new arrival in the chocolate field: Maida Heatterâ€™s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, published by Alfred Knopf, 1980. She provides a more modern, but still rich, form of drinking chocolate: Chocolate Hot Buttered Rum *3 Tablespoons chocolate syrup 3/4 cup milk 1 generous teaspoon instant coffee 1 Tablespoon butter 1/4 cup light rum Heat syrup and milk just to a boil. Stir in the instant coffee. Place the butter and rum in a hated mug. Whisk the milk and chocolate mixture until it foams, and pour it over the buttered rum. *Heatterâ€™s recipe for chocolate syrup: 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 2 cups cold water or coffee 2 cups granulated sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Stir cocoa and water to blend. Heat, over low heat, to a low boil. Add sugar and salt, and stir until dissolved. Bring back to a low boil and simmer three minutes. Cool and add the vanilla. Heatter gives two tips for melting chocolate. First, keep pan and spoon bone dry. Heating chocolate with a teaspoon or more of liquid is fine, but a slight moisture can make the chocolate stiffen. And melt it slowly, over low heat. The information in this article comes partly from Heatterâ€™s introduction. Allen also furnished a copy of The Chocolate Bible by Christian Teubner, Teubner Edition, Germany, 1996. Miles brought in The Little Book of Chocolate from the chocolate exhibition a the Field Museum of Chicago. A clipping pressed in its cover pages, reporting new evidence of chocolate among the Maya, echoed â€œAncient Chocolate Found in Maya â€˜Teapotâ€™ â€œ by Bijal P. Trivedi, National Geographic Today, July 17, 2002. And Gillian Wagnerâ€™s The Chocolate Conscience, Chatto & Windus, London, 1987, filled in the chinks.

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MassDOT Warns of Toll-fee Smishing Scam

03:06PM / Friday, April 26, 2024

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Department of Transportation was alerted that a text message-based scam, also known as smishing, is fraudulently claiming to represent tolling agencies from across the country. The scammers are claiming to represent the tolling agency and requesting payment for unpaid tolls.

The targeted phone numbers seem to be chosen at random and are not uniquely associated with an account or usage of toll roads.

Customers who receive an unsolicited text, email, or similar message suggesting it is from EZDriveMA or another toll agency should not click on the link.

EZDriveMA customers can verify a valid text notification in several ways:

EZDriveMA will never request payment by text
All links associated with EZDriveMA will include www.EZDriveMA.com

The FBI says it has received more than 2,000 complaints related to toll smishing scams since early March and recommends individuals who receive fraudulent messages do the following:

1. File a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov; be sure to include:

The phone number from where the text originated.
The website listed within the text

2. Check your account using the toll service's legitimate website.

3. Contact the toll service's customer service phone number.

4. Delete any smishing texts received.

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