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24

Hot chocolate

1568

AUTHOR: Bernal Díaz del Castillo

FROM: Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Neva España

(‘The True History of the Conquest of New Spain’)

As soon as the Great Montezuma had dined, all the men of the Guard had their meal and as many more of the other house servants, and it seems to me that they brought out over a thousand dishes of the food of which I have spoken, and then over two thousand jugs of cacao all frothed up, as they make it in Mexico.

The meeting of conquistador Hernán Cortés and Montezuma II, the last king of the Aztecs, is one of the great encounters in history. Two cultures came face to face; one ancient, one modern, each with its own way of life, religion and values. Each had philosophies, dreams and possessions that the other could never conceive of. Cortés was discovering a new world, planting the flag of Spain and the cross of Christ in towns and villages as he went. Montezuma ruled over a kingdom of glorious riches and chilling rituals. Each possessed items the other would find mesmerising. Cortés had horses; Montezuma had chocolate.

They came face to face on 8 November 1519. After many, many months of negotiations, stand-offs, gift offerings and diplomacy, they met outside what is now Mexico City. They were fearful and respectful of each other. Montezuma, a fit forty-year-old, was full of trepidation. Was this foreigner the spirit of the returning god-like ruler Quetzalcoatl coming to save his nation, or an adventurer come to plunder it? His daily ritual of sacrificing youths – especially fattened for the task, to be killed and then eaten – had failed to provide him with a definitive answer.

Cortés, meanwhile, was meeting a man who could stop his adventure in its tracks – whom he feared because of the large number of troops at his disposal – or allow him to build his Catholic churches, take his gold and precious objects, from stones to foodstuffs, and return home in glory.

‘It was indeed wonderful,’ Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who served as a swordsman under Cortés, wrote of the first encounter in his detailed account of it in 1568. ‘And now that I am writing about it, it all comes back before my eyes as though it had happened but yesterday.’ He describes how Cortés met his rival, who was carried along by a cortege of obsequious servants – never looking their master in the eye. His dress was magnificent – even his sandals had soles of gold, the upper parts adorned in precious stones. The ground was swept before him, cloths laid in his path.

There were a few awkward pleasantries and then, the conquistadors having been directed to their lodgings for the night, there was dinner – although they didn’t actually dine together. Montezuma preferred not to be seen eating, but after he’d finished he shared his magnificent banquet with his court and Cortés’s men.

Castillo records how the royal cooks prepared some 300 plates of food for Montezuma to choose from. He sat on a low stool, with a low table beside him covered with a white tablecloth. Little braziers burned beneath the dishes to keep them warm, and after four beautiful women had brought him a bowl in which to wash his hands, he got stuck in. White tortillas, plaited breads and wafers accompanied a variety of roasted duck, rabbit, turkey, pheasant and much more.

A decorative screen was placed in front of him so he could munch in private and some elders gathered about him to keep him company. He fed them morsels of what he liked while they answered questions he put to them. And during the meal, as the historian recounts, ‘from time to time they brought him, in cup-shaped vessels of pure gold, a certain drink made from cacao, and the women served this drink to him with great reverence’.

Having eaten a morsel of fruit and washed his hands again, there was a little light entertainment. A few ugly hunchbacks danced a jig, a jester told some jokes, then, after a puff on some pipes from which he inhaled ‘certain herbs they call tobacco’, he fell asleep.

It was then time for the others to eat. Imagine it as a grand buffet, except that, as other contemporary accounts recount, among the bowls of roast venison and rabbit, you might see a human arm poking out. It was also a chance for Cortés and his men to try a new exotic drink – in ‘two thousand jugs’ of chocolate, ‘all frothed up’, as Castillo describes in his account (quoted in full at the top of this chapter), even if he doesn’t go so far as to provide a detailed recipe. ‘We stood astonished at the excellent arrangements and the great abundance of provisions,’ he continues, doubtless reckoning Montezuma’s catering must have cost what you might inappropriately call an arm and a leg, as he goes on to surmise: ‘With his women and female servants and bread makers and cacao makers his expenses must have been very great.’

But the hot chocolate (which was not necessarily always hot) was worth it and in the ensuing months Cortés drank plenty of it. In a letter to Charles V of Spain, he championed it as ‘the divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue’. Not all the Spaniards liked it, however. A Jesuit missionary called José de Acosta remarked how it ‘disgusts those who are not used to it, for it has a foam on top or a scum-like bubbling’. And, he added, people ‘are addicted to it’. Heard that before?

In 1528 Cortés returned to Spain with cacao beans (among other things, it must be said) and, more importantly, details on how to turn them into hot chocolate. But it didn’t take off and it wasn’t until the reign of Charles V’s son Philip II that the drink started being served at court.

Biblioteca Nacional Madrid / Gianni Dagli Orti

Hernán Cortés and Montezuma II, the last king of the Aztecs, meet in 1519 just outside what is now Mexico City.

It’s likely that Cortés’s recipe was too bitter for European tastes. This frothy cocoa was rather different than the cup mug of sweet hot chocolate that you might sip before bed these days. It might have been prepared with all sorts of additional ingredients, including wine, chilli and aromatic flowers. The drink would have been made from mixing the beans and other items into a paste before adding water and then pouring it from jug to jug to froth it up and give it a head like beer.

As other products such as vanilla were brought back to Spain, they were added to the cocoa powder, along with sugar and then milk – used instead of water – and it become more palatable, delicious even. In fact the Spanish royals thought it so good that they kept their hot chocolate a secret for many years. The beans were in short supply and that they needed crushing into a paste before they could be used was information the royal household kept close to its chest.

Progressively, the European world cottoned on to the luxury of chocolate. It was seen as a divine drink, although not in the literal sense that it had been by the ancient Mayans, who pre-dated the Aztec civilisation. Images on ancient vases show that nobles were buried with a cup of hot chocolate; a nice mug of cocoa before they went to sleep for eternity. Similar etchings indicate how the beans were picked, fermented, dried and then roasted before being ground to a paste. The drink was used in rituals, but it was so highly valued that it was even used as a form of currency. There really was a time when money grew on trees. The conquistadors in 1521 came across beans stored as capital; there were even fake beans, which suggested someone was counterfeiting the currency. Such was their high value that they were treated like real coins. One Spaniard from the time reports seeing natives drop a few beans when they were trading: ‘They got on their hands and knees to pick them up as if an eye had fallen.’

The properties of chocolate were thought to be numerous. Bernardino de Sahagún, a missionary who spent most of his life in Mexico in the years after the conquest, said it could treat fevers and indigestion. You could drink it to cool down or warm up; it could settle the stomach, help you sleep or wake up. Depending on its preparation, its versatility knew no bounds.

But as has been the case throughout history, this is a product produced by the poor and consumed by the rich. That Montezuma drank and served it on such a lavish scale demonstrated his conspicuous consumption at a time when it was valued as currency. According to an account by Hernando de Oviedo y Valdéz, one of Cortés’s men, you could buy a rabbit for four cacao beans, a prostitute for ten and a slave for a hundred.

When Christopher Columbus discovered Mexico in 1503, he also came across cacao beans, but not knowing what to do with them, he carried on in search of ‘real’ gold. So we have Cortés to thank for bringing to Europe one of the most soothing and delicious drinks.

The Spanish should thus be rightly venerated for the proliferation of hot chocolate. A nineteenth-century food encyclopedia reminded its readers of this and Spain’s love of the stuff: ‘The Spaniards are the greatest consumers of cocoa or chocolate in the world and to them it has become so necessary for the support of health and physique that it is considered an extremely severe punishment indeed to withdraw it, even from criminals.’ I think I know the feeling.