58 Fun Facts About Hot Chocolate

The Mayo-Chinchipe culture domesticated cacao 5,300 years ago in what is now which country?

Ecuador is where the Mayo-Chinchipe people left the earliest known cacao use: residues about 5,300 years old at the Santa Ana-La Florida site in the upper Amazon, far south of Mesoamerica.

Among the Aztecs, what was it considered for a commoner to drink chocolate?

The drink signalled high status; warriors and nobles got it, everyone else did not.

When cocoa beans were used as currency in Mesoamerica, thirty beans could buy what?

A small rabbit cost 30 cacao beans in a 1545 Nahua price list from Tlaxcala, which put a turkey hen at 100 beans; cacao doubled as everyday money across Mesoamerica.

The Maya mixed ground cacao with water, vanilla, cornmeal and which fiery ingredient?

Chili peppers supplied the heat in the Maya drink, whisked from ground cacao, water, vanilla and cornmeal; sweetening it with sugar was a European habit that came much later.

How did Mesoamerican drinkers raise a thick foam on their chocolate?

Pouring it between two vessels from a height raised the froth; a Classic Maya vase shows a woman doing exactly that, and a good head of foam was the whole point.

Until the 19th century, hot chocolate was prescribed medicinally for which kind of complaint?

Liver and stomach ailments were among the complaints doctors treated with chocolate into the 1800s; cocoa flavonoids do have measurable effects on blood vessels, so they were not entirely wrong.

Chocolate is recorded as reaching the Spanish court in 1544, carried by nobles of which people?

The Q'eqchi' Maya nobles, escorted to Spain by Dominican friars in 1544, presented chocolate to Prince Philip; the popular story credits Cortés, but no evidence shows he introduced it.

Jesuit writer José de Acosta described the froth on the New World drink as what?

'Very unpleasant to taste' was Acosta's verdict on the froth, calling the drink loathsome to newcomers, though he noted Spaniards settled in the country were 'very greedy' for it.

In which year did London's first chocolate house open?

1657 is the year London's first chocolate house opened, in Queen's Head Alley off Bishopsgate; chocolate there sold for 10 to 15 shillings a pound, a rich man's habit.

White's, London's oldest gentlemen's club, was founded in 1693 as a chocolate house by an immigrant from where?

Italy was Francesco Bianco's homeland; he anglicised his name to Francis White, and within decades his chocolate house was notorious as a gambling club.

Physician Hans Sloane took up adding milk to drinking chocolate while working on which island?

Jamaica, where Sloane lived from 1687 to 1689 as physician to the governor, is where he found the local cacao drink nauseating and began mixing it with milk instead.

The Van Houten family, whose 1828 press squeezed cocoa butter from cocoa liquor, came from which country?

The Netherlands is home to the Van Houtens; their Amsterdam factory opened in 1815, and the 1828 press cut the cocoa butter in the liquor roughly in half, leaving a dry cake.

'Dutching' cocoa powder, which makes it darker and milder, means treating it with what?

Alkaline salts such as potassium carbonate neutralise cocoa's natural acidity; Coenraad van Houten introduced the treatment in the early 19th century, giving the darker, milder powder sold as Dutch-process cocoa.

On 4 March 1824 John Cadbury began selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate from a shop in which city?

Birmingham's Bull Street held John Cadbury's first shop, opened in 1824; he was a Quaker, like the Fry and Rowntree families behind Britain's other great cocoa firms.

Linnaeus named the cacao tree Theobroma, a Greek coinage meaning what?

Food of the gods is the literal sense of Theobroma, from Greek theos and broma; the full name is Theobroma cacao, and the stimulant theobromine borrows the same root.

Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa grower, produced what share of the global crop in 2022?

38% is Ivory Coast's share: about 2.2 million tonnes of a 2022 world crop of 5.87 million, with Ghana and Indonesia the next biggest producers.

Unusually for a fruit tree, where do cacao pods grow?

Straight out of the trunk and thick branches is where cacao pods form, a habit botanists call cauliflory; jackfruit fruits the same way.

Roughly how many seeds does a single cacao pod contain?

30 to 50 seeds fill a typical cacao pod, embedded in sweet white pulp; it takes several hundred fermented and dried beans to make a kilogram of chocolate.

Marshmallow began as a remedy made from the root of the marsh mallow plant by which ancient people?

The Egyptians combined marsh mallow root sap with honey as a sweet and a throat remedy in antiquity; French confectioners whipped the sap into pâte de guimauve in the 19th century.

Modern marshmallows replaced mallow-root sap with which whipping agent?

Gelatin took over from mallow-root sap as the whipping agent; it melts at about 95°F, just below body heat, which is why a marshmallow dissolves on the tongue or atop a hot drink.

Alex Doumak's 1956 patent, forcing marshmallow through tubes into ropes, describes which process?

Before that, marshmallows were moulded one at a time; extrusion is why they are all the same cylindrical shape.

Swiss Miss, launched in 1961, was billed as the first powdered cocoa mix that could be made with what?

Water instead of milk was the selling point: the Swiss Miss formula already contained dried milk, so a packet needed only hot water, the convenience the brand built its name on.

Before it hit grocery shelves, Swiss Miss cocoa was sold in pre-measured packets to which customers?

Airlines and restaurants took the first pre-measured packets; Charles Sanna created the mix to use up surplus dairy powder from his family's creamer business in Menomonie, Wisconsin.

Which company acquired the Swiss Miss brand in 1990?

Conagra acquired Beatrice Foods in 1990 and with it Swiss Miss, which Beatrice had bought from the Sanna family in 1967.

What was Nestlé's chocolate-milk powder called when it launched in the US in 1948?

Quik was the 1948 US launch name for Nestlé's powder; Europe sold it as Nesquik from the 1950s, and the single name later spread worldwide.

In which year did the brand become 'Nesquik' worldwide?

1999 was the year Nestlé adopted the Nesquik name worldwide, retiring the shorter US brand name it had used since 1948 so the powder carried one label everywhere.

Ovaltine, originally Ovomaltine, was developed in 1904 by chemist Albert Wander in which city?

Bern was home to the Wander laboratory where Albert Wander, building on his father Georg's malt-extract work, created Ovomaltine in 1904; the British version followed in 1909 as Ovaltine.

The 'Ovo' in Ovaltine's original name comes from the Latin word for what?

Egg is ovum in Latin, and egg with malt gave Ovomaltine its name; the 1904 recipe also used milk and cocoa, sold as a fortifying tonic.

Ovaltine went along on which famous expedition?

The first ascent of Everest in 1953 carried Ovaltine in its rations; the drink had been a mountaineering staple for decades, prized for calories that dissolve in hot water.

In the 1930s Ovaltine sponsored which children's radio serial, famous for its decoder-ring premiums?

Little Orphan Annie carried the Ovaltine sponsorship from 1931 to 1940, and its Secret Society decoder pins spawned every joke about secret messages that turn out to be adverts.

Milo, the malted chocolate powder, debuted in 1934 at the Royal Easter Show of which city?

Sydney's Royal Easter Show hosted Milo's 1934 debut; industrial chemist Thomas Mayne developed it during the Depression as a cheap fortifying drink, and Nestlé has long made it at Smithtown in New South Wales.

Milo is named after what?

An ancient Greek wrestler, Milo of Croton, lent the name; his legendary strength was the whole sales pitch for a drink aimed at growing children.

Which country had the world's highest per-capita consumption of Milo in 2009?

Malaysia led the world in per-capita Milo consumption in 2009, with the brand holding around 90 percent of the country's chocolate malt drink market.

Champurrado, Mexico's thick chocolate atole, is thickened with what?

Masa (corn dough) gives champurrado its body: the nixtamalised corn dough is whisked into chocolate and water or milk, and it is served with tamales at Las Posadas and the Day of the Dead.

How is a molinillo, the turned wooden whisk used for hot chocolate, operated?

Rolled between the palms, the molinillo spins its loose rings to froth the drink; the motion is the subject of the Mexican nursery rhyme 'Bate, bate, chocolate'.

Filipino tsokolate is brewed from discs of ground roasted cacao known as what?

Tabliya are the pure cacao discs dissolved in hot water, whisked frothy in a tsokolatera with a batirol and drunk at breakfast with pandesal, especially at Christmas.

In Rizal's Noli Me Tángere, ordering 'chocolate eh' or 'chocolate ah' told servants to make it thick or what?

Watered down was the 'ah' cup, aguado, while 'eh' meant espeso, thick; in Rizal's novel the friar's order told the servant how much the guest mattered.

In which two countries is a 'submarino', dark chocolate melted in hot milk, a winter staple?

Argentina and Uruguay share the submarino: a bar of dark chocolate dropped into a glass of hot milk and stirred as it melts, a winter favourite in cafés on both sides of the Río de la Plata.

In Colombia, hot chocolate is often served with what dropped into or alongside the cup?

The cheese softens into salty, stretchy lumps that are fished out with a spoon.

Paris tea house Angelina, famed for its 'L'Africain' hot chocolate, was founded in 1903 by a confectioner from where?

Austria was the homeland of Antoine Rumpelmayer, the confectioner who opened the Rue de Rivoli salon in 1903 and named it after his daughter-in-law, Angelina.

The bicerin, layered espresso, chocolate and milk in a small glass, is which city's signature drink?

Turin is the home of the bicerin; Caffè al Bicerin on Piazza della Consolata has served it since 1763, and the name is Piedmontese for 'small glass'.

Madrid's Chocolateria San Gines, serving churros since 1894, is famous for being open how long?

24 hours a day is the San Ginés tradition: the chocolatería off Calle Arenal kept its doors open round the clock, so night owls and early risers shared churros and thick chocolate.

'Hot Chocolate' is a musical number in the 2004 film The Polar Express, directed by whom?

Robert Zemeckis directed the 2004 film, with Tom Hanks playing the Conductor, Santa and the Hobo among others through motion capture.

The Polar Express was adapted from a 1985 picture book by which author?

Chris Van Allsburg wrote and illustrated the 1985 picture book, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1986; the film's $165 million budget was then a record for an animated feature.

Who fronted the British band Hot Chocolate, which had a UK hit every year from 1970 to 1984?

Errol Brown formed Hot Chocolate in London in 1968 with bassist Tony Wilson and fronted it through its hit years; 'You Sexy Thing' found a second life in The Full Monty.

Which 1977 single was the band Hot Chocolate's only UK number one?

So You Win Again topped the UK chart in 1977, the band's only number one; unusually for them it was written by an outsider, Russ Ballard of Argent.

New York's Serendipity 3 is famous for which dessert version of the drink?

Frrrozen Hot Chocolate, served in a goblet under whipped cream, is the signature of Serendipity 3, which also claimed Guinness records for a $1,000 sundae and a $295 hamburger and appeared in the 2001 film Serendipity.

Hershey's Syrup, the American shortcut to chocolate milk, was introduced in which year?

1926 is when Hershey's Syrup arrived, nearly two decades after the Kiss of 1907; stirred into cold milk, it became the American shortcut to chocolate milk.

Cadbury's malted chocolate drink Bournvita takes the first part of its name from what?

The Bournville factory village, the Cadbury model settlement begun beside the works in the 1890s, supplied the 'Bourn' in Bournvita, which reached India in 1948 and became a household name there.

Mexican-style hot chocolate typically pairs semi-sweet chocolate, sugar and vanilla with which spice?

Cinnamon is the spice in Mexican table chocolate such as Abuelita and Ibarra; the tablets are frothed with a wooden whisk rather than stirred with a spoon.

The caffè mocha takes its name from a coffee-growing town in which country?

Yemen's Red Sea port of Mocha shipped the coffee that lent the drink its name; a caffè mocha is simply hot chocolate mixed with espresso, a staple of American coffee shops.

In some Belgian cafes, ordering a warme chocolade brings a cup of hot milk and a bowl of what?

Bittersweet chocolate chips come in a small bowl beside a cup of steamed milk; you stir them in yourself, a do-it-yourself twist on the thick European style.

In Nigeria and Jamaica, hot chocolate is commonly referred to by which name?

The habit comes from calling any morning drink 'tea'; in Ivory Coast, hot chocolate accompanies French-style breakfasts.

What does the Viennese variant Heiße Schokolade Wiener Art contain for extra thickness?

An egg yolk whisked into the melted chocolate and milk gives the Viennese version its body; in Germany that name marks it off from powder-based Trinkschokolade.

Adding rum to hot chocolate produces a drink known by what name?

Lumumba is the name, after Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba; it is chocolate, hot or cold, laced with rum and usually topped with whipped cream, a German and Danish favourite.

In Peru, hot chocolate is served on Christmas morning alongside which Italian cake?

Panettone, sold in Peru as panetón, is paired with thick hot chocolate at Christmas gatherings called chocolatadas, even though December falls in the southern-hemisphere summer.

Which Aztec ruler was famously reported to drink frothing chocolate from golden cups?

Montezuma II was served chocolate at his banquets, reported conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who described dozens of jars of the frothed drink brought out in cups of fine gold.

Tradition credits which Duke of Savoy with commissioning the thick cioccolata calda around 1560?

Emmanuel Philibert is said to have served the thick drink to celebrate moving the Savoy capital from Chambéry; that dense, creamy style became the Italian benchmark.