The conquistador Hernan Cortés was the first European to realise cocoa beans were valuable – but someone had brought them back before him. Christopher Columbus stole some from a Mayan trader and brought them over between 1502-1504. He knew they were worth something, but didn’t understand what they were or what to do with them.
Cortés knew better, and brought them to Spain in 1528. Because cocoa beans were in short supply, chocolate was top secret in Spain for 100 years and the only people allowed to process cocoa beans were monks. They added cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar – leaving out the chilli that the Aztecs liked – and realised it was nicer served warm.
The rest of Europe was still in the dark. English and Dutch sailors had found cocoa beans in captured Spanish ‘treasure’ ships coming back from the New World, but they didn’t know what they were and threw them overboard, angry that they’d wasted their time. Some of them thought they were sheep’s droppings!
But eventually word got out. An Italian traveller, Francesco Carletti, visited Central America and saw the drink being made and by 1606 chocolate was in Italy. It reached France in 1615 when Anne, daughter of Philip II of Spain, married King Louis XIII of France.
The French Court loved the new drink of chocolate, believing it was exotic, nourishing and good for your health. Cocoa plantations were set up in Cuba and Haiti in 1684, so in France it became much easier to get your hands on the sought-after cocoa beans.
Next it was the turn of the Dutch, who captured Curacao, an island off Venezuela, in 1634 and brought cocoa beans back to Holland. Chocolate probably reached Germany in 1646, brought back by visitors to Italy. And then finally it reached England in the 1650s…
Read more about when chocolate arrived in England