Cacao

Dehydrated - Sweetened Tropical Fruit
	CACAO Name in Spanish: Cacao Name in latín: Theobroma cacao zoom

ASPECT AND DESCRIPTION Common noun of a tree, of its seeds and of other similar trees of a family to whom also belongs the tail. The cocoa tree is a perennial plant that produces many crops in a year. It can reach 6 m of medium high and it has shining leaves of until 30 cm of longitude and small red flowers that are formed in the trunk and in the more old branches. Only a thirty of the approximately 6.000 flowers that are opened during the year reach to form seeds. These, call sometimes beans of the cocoa, are shut in an ear of corn or colored reddish leopard blow of a few 28 cm of longitude. The cocoa seeds, of bitter flavor, are purple or whitish colored and they are looked like the almonds. The fatty (cocoa butter) that the seeds contain in large quantity is used in the manufacture of medicine, cosmetic and soaps.
HISTORY The cocoa has been intimately associated with the life, the palate and the ups and downs of the on duty owners of the power in the occidental world for more than 2000 years; it was food, wealth and power for the varieties of Mayas and Aztec whom gave to it the value of currency. It was power and wealth for the Spanish’s while they kept the monopoly of the almond. The history of the cocoa as culture remounts to several centuries before the conquest of America, although neither nobody knows with accuracy as nor when the Mayas discovered that the bore seeds were eatable. The first mention that it is understood about the cocoa in Castilian language is due to a description made by Bernal Dias del Castillo of banquet of too much than three hundred offered plates for the Moctezuma emperor. In 1572 the Francisco Hernández physician describes this bear fruit to the Felipe II king of Spain. The Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo chronicler described which the cocoa bought between the Central Americans: " with 10 cocoa seeds is bought a rabbit; with 4 are acquired 8 apples or medlar trees; with 100 is bought a slave and with between 8 to 10 units is bought the service of a lady ". The Mayas developed an indispensable practical to make the chocolate smooth on palate and was grinding it several times before making the pastilles and later beat it hard for a long time with a hand mill. But the chocolate, before the conquest of America was drunk at the end of the foods like a cold drink and little had to see with the current drink sweet and heat. The Mayas seasoned the chocolate with cocoa flowers, vanilla flowers, Cayenne pepper, honey and achiote who gave it a reddish coloration. In the Maya weddings the bridegroom to seal the matrimonial contract, gave to the bride 5 cocoa seeds. In the year 1615 the chocolate made its official entry in the court of France of the hand of the Spanish female infant Ana of Austria who got married to Louis XIII. El Swedish scientific Linneo was the one which classified to this plants with the name of Theabroma cacao, he gave them this name because in Greek it means " food of the gods ". In 1882 Dutch Van Houten invents a machine that after grinding the seeds and pressing them obtained an amber-like oil (cocoa butter) leaving a dark and dusty remainder (cocoa). The 1902 Rudolph Lindt a Swiss that remembered the gold rule discovered by the Mayas ( while more is ground and beaten the chocolate, more smooth and silky is on palate ) manufactured the mill to rollers (refiner) and began to grind the cocoa for more than 72 hours unceasingly and later added to it a 25% more of cocoa butter, discovering in this way a formulation that would give fortune to that family and to their descendants
CULINARY USE The pulp of the coconut is very used in the kitchen of Indonesian. It is also very used in candied fruits, bonbons, tarts, and etcetera.