CHOCOLATE – France’s

CHOCOLATE – France’s mild obsession We all know Paris as the city of love or the city of lights - but did you know it is also the city of chocolate shops? The ‘Chocolate Capital’ boasts over 300 dedicated stores, claiming the title around the world. It’s no wonder we think the French have a mild obsession with chocolate says food writer Ally Mitchel… France is besotted, and produces around 700 000 tonnes of chocolate each year. This love goes back all the way to the 17th century, when chocolate was an aphrodisiac drug lorded around Versailles, and nobles hired their own personal chocolate makers. However, it wasn’t all chocolate parties – it’s a tale of trade wars and greed which brought chocolate to the French stage. For thousands of years, the Olmecs, then Mayans of ancient Mesoamerica (the Mexico of today), drank a brew of cacao. And by the 1500s, the Aztecs had adopted a similar cultural practice, drinking xoc*l*tl meaning ‘bitter water’, and traded the beans as currency. This ‘drink of the gods’ was consumed by the King Montezuma 50 times a day and was said to possess mystical medicinal and aphrodisiac properties. In the 16th century, Christopher Columbus allegedly brought cacao beans back to Europe after exploring the Americas, but these fruits were considered too bitter to gain any public excitement. However, when the Spanish conquistadores including Hernán Cortés returned with the beans in the late 1500s, the publicity grew - especially when the Spanish court added other colonial imports, including sugar, to make it more palatable. The Spanish then kept the joy of chocolate a trade secret for the next decade. Chocolate came to southern France in the early 1600s, introduced by Jewish migrants who settled in Bayonne, bringing with the secret of chocolate-making. Over the next two hundred years, this community founded the first French chocolate companies, and established Bayonne as France’s first chocolatier city. Finally, the Spanish secret of chocolate was released around Europe. By 1615, chocolate was the darling of the French court. The 14-year-old Spanish princess Anne of Austria presented her betrothed King Louis XIII with a chest filled with chocolate, and from then on it was the exclusive indulgence of the Kings of France and their courts. Consumed in liquid form, this exoticism was flavoured with other mystical ingredients such as coffee, cloves and vanilla, all considered to possess medicinal or druglike qualities. Most of all, the French court deemed chocolate an aphrodisiac thanks to its revitalising qualities and its Aztec roots, which, to the French aristocrats’ sensibilities, meant it was wildly sensual. In 1702, a doctor reported that, ‘Chocolate's properties are such that they stimulate Venus' ardour’. Under Louis XIV, chocolate in all its forms was a feature of Versailles’ cuisine. Confectioners were hired exclusively to make the nobles daily hot chocolates. He himself developed such a taste for chocolate, that it was deemed a continuous supply was essential. So he ordered the cultivation of cocoa beans in 62 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 63