History of Chocolate as a Drink

History of Chocolate as a Drink
The first known cocoa plantations were established by the Maya in the lowlands of south Yucatan about 600 AD.

Cocoa trees were being grown by Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru when the Europeans discovered central America.

The bean were highly prized and used as money as well as to produce a drink known as chocolatl.

The beans were roasted in earthenware pots and crushed between stones, sometimes using decorated heated tables ad mill stones.

They could then be kneaded into cakes, which could be mixed with cold water to make a drink.

Vanilla, spices or honey were often added and the drink whipped to make it frothy. The Aztec Emperor Montezeuma was said to have drink 50 jars of this beverage per day.

Christopher Columbus bought back some coca beans to Europe as a curiosity, but it was only after the Spaniard conquered Mexico that Don Cortez introduced the drink to Spain in the 1520s.

Here sugar was added to overcome some of the bitter, astringent flavors, but the drinks remained virtually unknown in the rest of Europe for almost a hundred years, coming to Italy in 1606 and France in 1627.

It was very expensive and being a drink for the aristocracy, its spread was often connected to connections between powerful families.

For example the Spanish princess, Anna of Austria, introduced it to her husband King Louis XIII of France and the French court in about 1615. Here Cardinal Richelieu enjoyed it both as a drink to aid his digestion.

Its flavors was not liked by every one and one pope in fact declared that it could be drunk during fast, because it taste was so bad.

The first chocolate drinking houses were established in London in 1657 and it was mentioned in Pepys’s Diary of 1664 where he wrote that ‘jocolatte’ was ‘very good’.

In 1727 milk was added to the drink. This invention is generally attributed to Nicholas Sanders.

During the 18th century White’s Chocolate House became the fashionable place for young Londoners, while politicians of the day went to the Cocoa Tree Chocolate House.

One problem with the chocolate drink was that it was very fatty. Over half of the cocoa bean is made up of cocoa butter. This was melt in hot water making the cocoa particles hard to disperse as well as looking unpleasant because of fat coming to the surface.

The Dutch, however, found a way of improving the drink by removing part of this fat. In 1828 Van Houten developed the cocoa press.

This was quite remarkable, as his entire factory was manually operated at the time. The cocoa bean cotyledons (known as cocoa nibs) were pressed to produce a hard ‘cake’ with about half the fat removed.

This was milled into a powder, which could be used to produce a much less fatty drink. In order to make this powder disperse better in the hot water or milk, the Dutch treated the cocoa beans during the roasting process with an alkali liquid.

This has subsequently become known as the Dutching process. By changing the type of alkalizing agent, it also became possible to adjust the color of the cocoa powder.
History of Chocolate as a Drink

High and Low Tea

High and Low Tea
With the growth in popularity of serving tea to friends and family, inevitably, a new set of rules also came into being. “Tea etiquette” became the rage, and new conventions and a new vocabulary quickly evolved.

There were many different kinds of meals and occasions that were called “tea”. Today the terms “low tea” and “high tea” are often used incorrectly in the United States.

A formal affair, “low tea” was called this because the tea and food were served on low tables next to armchairs on which the guests were seated.

“High tea,” on the other hand, indicated and still does a less formal, family affair served at 5.30 or 6.00, when workers returned from the field and children were home from school.

High tea, also sometimes called “meat tea.” Was much more substantial meal served on a kitchen or dining table, and included savory meats, soups, puddings and sweets and lots of robust tea.

High tea, the referred not to “high society” but to the height of the table.

“At home tea” and “tea receptions” were huge social events that often included as many as two hundred guests.

People customarily dropped by anytime between four and seven in the evening to enjoy bountiful displays of food and tea.
High and Low Tea

History of Softdrinks Packaging

History of Softdrinks Packaging
Waters from natural springs were recognized as being safe (even healthy) to drink from earliest times and were transported by wherever means that were available.

Naturally carbonated waters were collected into earthenware containers which were tightly sealed with cork and wax, usually not very successfully.

The used of earthenware bottles proved to be unsatisfactory for the more highly carbonated aerated mineral waters and they were soon replaced by glass bottles.

Many of the early glass bottles had round bottoms ensuring that they were stored on their side, thereby keeping the corks moist and so preventing leakage from corks drying out.

The manufacture of glass bottles was a skilled job as they were hand blown.

Although some semi-automation had been introduced earlier, the first patent for an automatic glass bottle blowing machine was granted to Michael J. Owens in the USA in 1904.

High pressure generated inside bottles by the carbonation caused frequent leakage and although improved by wiring-in-place, corks were generally unsatisfactorily. Many alternative forms of seals were patented over the years and these fell broadly into three main categories:

• Wire and rubber sealing devices were especially popular in the USA until the early 1900s. The wire could be either an internal spring form, which held a seal in place on the inside of the neck, or of the external ‘swing’ type, in which an external wire frame was used to hold a ceramic plug in place against a rubber seal. First patented by Charles de Quillfeldt in 1874, this latter type is still currently in use for some specialty.

• Variations on the theme of using an internal ball made from rubber, ebonite or glass were developed and used with varying degrees of success. The ball was held in place by the internal pressure. The most successful of these was patented by Hiram Codd of London. His bottle was widely used in the UK from 1870s until the 1930s. A similar bottle, but with a floating rubber ball acting as seal, was patented in the USA by S. Twitchell in 1883.

• The third popular alternative was the internal screw top bottle. Unlike today’s bottle, the thread was on the inside of the bottle neck and an ebonite or wooden stopper screwed on to the neck, with a rubber washer being used to improve the seal. These types of stoppers were in common usage well into the 1950s in the UK. Ebonite, an early type of plastic resin material soon replaced wood, which has a tendency to absorb moisture, causing it to swell and crack the bottle neck.

A major step forward in sealing development was made by William Painter, who in 1895 patented the ‘Crown Cork’, founding the Crown Cork and Seal Company in 1 April 1892. Although initially slow to gain acceptance for two reasons:

• The existing large capital investment in returnable bottles and bottling plant, and

• The need for a tool to remove the crown, the crown cork eventually became popular, especially for small single serve and beer bottles. Screw stopper retained their popularity for the larger bottles where re-sealability was important.

Except for specialty earthenware ginger beer containers, glass bottles were the only form of packaging for carbonates for over hundred years until the introduction of cans in the 1960s. Then, just as the second half of the nineteenth century had been ‘boom-time’ for product development, the second half of the twentieth century became ‘boom time’ for packaging and distribution of development.
History of Softdrinks Packaging

Grape Juice and Wine

Grape Juice and Wine
Ancient Egyptian inscription indicate that the grape was grown there in 2375 B.C. Murals to Egyptian tombs carry depictions of grape vines, grape harvesting, and trampling to obtain the juice.

By way of classical Greece and later Rome, the grape vine expanded into all the lands of Europe and North Africa where it will grow.

The Greeks cultivated the grape vine wherever they went; Italy, north Africa, southern France and southern Spain, including the best known wine regions of the world, Bordeaux and Burgundy. The Greeks called Italy the Land of Vines.

Romans grew different varieties and appreciated their diversity. Grapes were grown on trees and trellises, preferentially on terraced hills and banks surrounding river valleys. Romans aged wine in barrels, which they invented. Before then it had been kept in earthenware amphorae.

Grape juice changes naturally into wine when sugar fermenting yeast is present. When grapes are crushed with the skins, yeast comes in contact with the juice. It grows in the juice, using the sugar as its source of energy, and in process transforms the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Alcohol in high concentrations is toxic, and when it reaches a certain level (between 12 and 14 percent), most strains of yeasts cannot grow any more. The wine is now ready. It is young wine and tastes very much likes grape juice alcohol. When the first fermentation is completed (sometimes even before), and especially if the wine is in a warm palace and exposed to the air, special bacteria start growing on the alcohol and transforming it into acetic acid. The wine spoils and turns to vinegar.

Since remotest antiquity, the principal problem was not to make wine but to keep it from spoiling. In classical Greece wines were drunk young and most were probably vinegary. To counter the acid taste a variety of methods were employed. Greeks learned that air speeds up the spoiling process. Amphorae had narrow necks to reduce the contact of wine with air, and they were kept tightly stoppered.

Because air could penetrate earthenware surfaces, the Greeks line their amphorae with resin. This preserved wine for use in commerce. The Romans took a step forward when they invented wooden barrels. They could be stoppered better than amphorae, and the oak imparted flavor from the wine. Some Roman wines apparently kept very well. There are reports of vintages that lasted to a hundred years.
Grape Juice and Wine