"If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not."
"I'm a novice cook and have heard conflicting stories and would like to have it settled once and for all. Is Chocolate period?" – Lady Rowan Coerc
My research staff tells me that this is a religious question and so
I need to be very careful about how I answer it. With many religious
questions, the answer can really depend on how you have defined your
terms. In this case, the most important term to be defined is "Period",
and how you do that will give you the answer you are looking for.
Most folks define "Period" as the time governed by the SCA, which
I'm told is either the beginning of time, the fall of Rome, or 600, depending;
and 1600, 1620, or 1650, depending. I've never been really clear
about what I'm supposed to be "depending" on, but that's not important.
Other folks seem to want to define things a bit more strictly
than that. I play a 12th -13th Century French woman from the
parts of France controlled by the English, and that's really good enough
for me. Some people (and they know who they are) can tell you the
current date for their personas, and that's OK too.
Like the song says, "there are nine and sixty ways to play the SCA,
and every one of them is right." I think that we all look for what
is important to us, and leave out the rest.
The questions then become not so much , is something "Period",
but is it "Period" for me, and "is it important to the way I play
the Game"?
Now, what were we talking about? Oh, right, Chocolate.
The easy answer is "Of course it is. The cacao plant existed for
years before the Spanish first met up with it in Mexico." Cortez
brought the first Cacao beans back to Spain with him in 1528. Just
at what time people figured out how to mix sugar with the cacao to make
it less bitter is a matter of debate between my sources. When they
finally figured it out, it was being mixed into a pasty brick full of sugar,
cinnamon, red peppers, cloves, aniseed, Achiote, and enough corn meal to
make it hold together. Oh yes, and it was served as a cold drink.
The Spanish, held on to the secret as long as they could, but by the 1630s
some was being exported to Italy and Flanders. It did not become
widely known in France until 1659.
Modern Chocolate candy is pretty much the 19th Century
invention of a man named Hershey.
It has been suggested that if you want to try "Period" chocolate,
get some unsweetened baking chocolate, boil that in water until it's a
bit thinner than hot cocoa, add some cinnamon and dried ground jalapeno.
Then let it chill. Please note that in Period, women were not allowed
to drink this, so go ahead guys.
Some suggested readings:
Coady, Chantal. Chocolate, Food of the Gods. Chronicle
Books, 1993.
Coe, Sophie D, and Michael D. Coe. The True History of Chocolate.
New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.
Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. New York: Stein and Doubleday,
1973.
If you have any questions about things that interest you, please send them to me, either directly, or by way of the Chronicler.