Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
by Mort Rosenblum.
Review by Chocolate-adorer and critic ('oh yes, please') J. Zimmerman
| Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
by Mort Rosenblum.
Includes the secrets of the food of the gods.
Let him advise you what chocolate to try on your chocolate pilgrimages.
See also our chocolate page
and our
Chocolate Taste Tests:
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Real Chocolate : Sweet and Savory Recipes for Nature's Purest Form of Bliss
by Chantal Coady.
Includes
50 delicious recipes from a leading campaigner for REAL chocolate.
Try her
 Chocolate bombe
Chocolate nemesis revisited
and
Bad Girl's Trifle.
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Je'oan D'ark Limoncello Truffles.
Alice Medrich on chocolate.
Fran Bigelow on chocolate.
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Chapters of Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
A delicious book and a lot of fun.
The only problem with reading it is that I get CRAVINGS for chocolate.
These are the chapters.
Chapter 1: The Gods' Breakfast.
Chocolate began with the Olmecs about three thousand years ago.
The "almondlike cacao beans ... named Theobroma - elixir of the gods - are the
basis of a $60 billion industry" with "about 15 million acres planted in cacao."
Initially the beans were fermented to dry the beans so they could be shipped without
spoiling.
However, fermentation is crucial to the final taste.
- Native variety of T. cacao is the fragile criollo, which goes into 1% of all chocolate.
- The forastero variety is more robust but less fragrant and rich.
- Hybrid trinitario (in 10% of chocolate)
thrived in Trinidad after the early-1700s Caribbean calamity.
- The spicy nacional was developed in Ecuador as a 'better' forastero.
He makes these sweeping observations:
- "Belgians prefer thicker molded coatings and more fresh cream in their centers".
- "Italians lean toward dark chocolate with hazelnut".
- "Swiss like sweet milk in quantity".
- He prefers French chocolate above all.
Chapter 2: Chocolat.
Patrick Roger, a MOF (meilleur ouvier de France).
Chloë Doutre-Roussel "is a chocolate lunatic. The French would call her
une choco-dépendante, ... a chocoholic with class".
She won the Fortnum & Mason position of 'chocolate taster' out of a pool of 3000 applicants.
Jacques Genin, Rosenblum's 'choice to provide' his 'stash of chocolate should' he
'become marooned on a desert island'.
Chapter 3: Origin of the Species.
Back to the Olmecs.
"Cacao seeds were most likely brought to Central America during Preclassical Mayan times,
betweeen 1500 B.C. and A.D. 200."
Describes use of chocolate among the Mayans and Aztecs.
Chapter 4: Chocolate for Turkeys.
In Oxaca, Mexico, mole poblano is a chile-laced chocolate sauce
served with chicken now (but traditionally for turkey).
Recipes are usually for 40.
It's made with chocolate and 27 (apparently a magic number) ingredients that vary with the cook and
(it seems) what is at hand.
Chapter 5: The Bittersweetest Town on Earth.
Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Chapter 6: The Chocolate Coast.
Chocolate on the Ivory Coast in West Africa.
40% of the world's chocolate comes from here.
Rosenblum investigates reports of child slavery in the cacao plantations,
and concludes that the rumors have some basis but are greatly exaggerated.
Chapter 7: Claudio da Príncipe.
Restoring an abandoned cacao plantation on a West African island,
"Claudio is Crocodile Dundee, Gandhi-style."
Chapter 8: Valrhona Valhalla.
Valrhona factory at Tain l'Hermitage (France).
Obsessed about producing only the best chocolate.
Makes 7,000 tons of chocolate per year,
which is 1% of that made by the Swiss-based Barry Callebaut in France and Belgium.
did present some of the most interesting stories in the book,
Its representatives thrive on being rude:
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(p.150)
Richard Donnelly, who produces fine ganaches and pralinés
at his shop in Santa Cruz, California, spends five figures a year buying Valrhona base.
Once he telephones Valrhona's United States headquarters with a sensible
technical question.
"The guy told me that if I called myself a chocolatier,"
Donnelly told me, as much amused as outraged at such a fine example of French arrogance.
"And he hung up on me."
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One of my favorite stories is how the terrifying
Chloë Doutre-Roussel"
ignores the 'keep out' messages from
Valrhona and climbs over the wall to get in - and not just once.
Valrhona's secrecy about its sources and methods make sense, though,
when one considers the deceit of
Cadbury's against
Fry's.
Chapter 9: The French Masters.
See Rosenblum's book for his raves.
In France, Rosenblum says, chocolate transcends us.
This includes the unadorned chocolate bar as well as 'chocolates'
filled, decorated, and molded as confections.
Chapter 10: Belgium: Hobbit Chocolate.
Rosenblum is not a fan, finding that it tends to have too much sugar.
Chapter 11: The Empress is All Clothes.
The story of Godiva
chocolate, mostly seen through a smoke screen.
Rosenblum is not a fan, writing
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(p. 205)
"Much of this tempting chocolate tasted to me as if someone dumped a lot of sugar
into melted candlewax."
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Chloë Doutre-Roussel tried unidentified, and reported
"hints of an overfilled ashtray" before throwing the remains away.
Chapter 12: In the Land of Rose and Vile Creams.
Britain.
Well, I like Cadbury's, Fry's, and Terry's, so I have no patience with Rosenblum's
snobby attitude. Give me milk-chocolate fruit-and-nuts any day.
But Rosenblum deigns to praise:
- Gerry Coleman is Rosenblum's 'favorite fondeur in Britain'.
Coleman advises "appreciate nuances in acidity, bitterness, and mouthfeel".
- Alan Porter, though it took four years, seduced the sceptical
Valrhona into letting him test-market their chocolate in Britain.
- Chantel Cody [who has proposed a useful
Five Senses Chocolate Test] is also mentioned with respect.
Chapter 13: Switzerland, and Beyond.
'Lindt can be one of the best price-per-pound itmes in
anybody's supermarket. It is clean and consistent.
... But it is mass-market chocolate, with all the limitations of bigness.'
Mac Felchin is praised: 'It would be hard to give up Felchin's Maracaibo.'
Chapter 14: Where's the Nutella?
A little paen to Nutella, invented in Italy in W.W.II when chocolate
was scarce but hazelnuts abounded; adored in Europe, even by
Clöe.
Chapter 15: Body and Soul.
The PR chapter - how chocolate is beneficial as long as you can avoid all that sugar.
Chapter 16: Chocolate Soldiers in the American Revolution.
Steve de Vries is described as a 'cocoa-flavored Will Rogers' who
bought a chocolate factory in Mexico and conches in Hamburg (Germany), and
shipped it all to Colorado.
John Scharffenberger is described as 'the reincarnation of Mr. Rogers'.
Michael Recchiuti buys the chocolate base; San Francisco.
Richard Donnelly buys the chocolate base; Santa Cruz.
Gary Guittardiuti buys the chocolate base; San Francisco.
But read his book to check out his many other spectacular tastings and suggestions.
Chapter 17: Camp Cacao.
Mort Rosenblum's final house-boat chocolate party on the Seine (Paris) with
Claudio da Príncipe,
Clöe ,
Jacques Genin,
Steve de Vries.
Naughty and Nice
Chocolate Witches and Wizards of
Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
Cadbury (British).
An English Quaker chocolate firm.
In early 1900s, entered a partnership with
Cecil Fry to import cacao from South America.
But Cadbury made secret deals with the growers to starve
Fry and Sons of their supply of cacao.
Claudio da Príncipe: farmer; roaster.
'He prefers his chocolate rouch, flavorful, and straightforward.'
Clöe Doutre-Roussel: Contemporary chocolate expert.
Had a dream job (beating out 3,000 competing applicants) at
Fortnum and Mason's for a year but left after feeling unable to 'educate' the British palate.
No surprise there - much as I love reading about chocolate, my preferences are quite different
from Clöe's.
Michael Coe. Mesoamerican anthropologist.
Author of The True History of Chocolate, based on the work of his wife,
anthropologist Sophie Dobzhansky Coe.
Death by chocolate.
In 1915, Heinrich Stollwerck,
fell into a blending machine he had invented.
It exploded while he adjusted it.
He lost has balance and drowned in chocolate.
Fry and Sons (British):
made better (less sugar, darker) chocolate than their
rivals Cadbury with whom they entered into partnership
in the early 1900s, only to be cheated by Cadbury, who made secret deals with the growers to starve
Fry and Sons of their supply of cacao from South America.
Godiva (American; initially Belgian).
"Artisan chocolate can quickly lose its quality when kicked into mass
production" writes Rosenblum. This is just before he writes about
his family company of Joseph Draps, who named his hand-made chocolates 'Godiva'.
In the mid-1960s, Godiva was taken over by Campbell's soups.
Jacques Genin: Mort Rosenblum's pick as making 'the best'
chocolates. Makes 'ganache and pralinés from
Valrhona base.
John Scharffenberger: Berkeley. Makes 'what many Europeans consider to be the only really good chocolate
in Amererica'. Makes blends, which gives his chocolate complexity;
dismisses 'the fascination with single-origin chocolate
as a fad' (p.272). Uses almost no sugar. "With chocolate, you just let heddonism
take over. It's a matter of pleasure, a sort of Buddhist bon vivance."
Does the whole process.
David Lebovitz: Contemporary chocolate writer;
more experienced than Rosenblum and educates him.
Author of "The Great Book of Chocolate", which is more useful than Rosenblum's book
if you want instruction on making something with chocolate.
Lindt (Randolphe): Swiss.
developed conching, the movement of a heavy roller through molten chocolate;
"this breaks and blends the components while releasing acetic acid
and other unwanted volatile elements".
Michel Chaudun: Paris, France.
Another French fondeur with a passion for chocolate.
He makes his mini-pave (couverture-coated cube of ganache) with the finest ingredients and (of course)
top-secret methods.
Nestlé (Henri): Swiss; with Daniel Peter,
combined milk with chocolate (by condensing the milk to eliminate the water, which
previously prevented the combination of chocolate and milk).
Steve de Vries: 'a self-taught technician'.
Challenges and retests the assumptions of chocolate making.
Said that
Michel Chaudun's
'hallowed chocolat aux éclats de fèves' 'overrated.'
Eric Schlosser : Contemporary food writer;
similar approach (such as his Fast Food Nation),
showing great interest in the economics and processes of a food business
as well with taste of the product.
Stollwerck (German):
The five Stollwerck brothers were "early masters of big chocolate" and large mechanization.
One of the brothers, Heinrich Stollwerck, was a 1915
death by chocolate.
Valrhona (French):
Specialists. Many say their chocolate is the best in the world.
Some of their named blends:
- Aranguani. Venezuelan blend. Aromas of grape, chestnut;
faint bouquet of honey.
- Caraïbe is 66% Venezuelan trinitario.
Sweet fruity taste with roasted almonds and coffee tones.
One of Rosenblum's favorites.
- Gran Couva is 64% cacao made with trinitario from Trinidad.
Hints of flowers, jasmine.
- Guanaja is 70% cacao, a blend of criollo and trinitario
from Venezuela.
"Nuances of ripe fruit and fresh flowers, but with an exceptional bitterness."
Also one of Rosenblum's favorites.
- Jivara is the one milk chocolate in this set, with 40% cacao from
South American plantations.
- Manjari is 64% Madagascar cacao ("strains of
criollo and trintario").
Valrhona into letting him test-market their chocolate in Britain.
Chocolate FAQs from Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
- The take-home fact throughout the book is that the best chocolate can only be made if you have the
best beans.
This is why Cadbury's double-crosses
Fry's
and companies like
Valrhona guard the identity of their suppliers intensely.
- (p.270):
- In 1893 (William Gervase Clarence-Smith calculated)
a chocolate-factory worker had to work for 60 hours to afford one kilo
(about two and a quarter pounds) of chocolate.
- In 1913 (Clarence-Smith calculated)
a chocolate-factory worker had only to work for 1 hour to afford one kilo
of chocolate.
- [I estimate that in 2005, at $65 for a pound of high quality chocolate, and assuming that
a chocolate factory worker is paid (who knows?) about $50/hour,
they need 3 hours work to buy a kilo. If they are paid $25/hour,
they need 6 hours work to buy a kilo. $12/hour,
they need 12 hours work to buy a kilo.]
Books that use Chocolate
-
Remember that the better DADA (Defense Against the Dark Arts) professors in
The Harry Potter Books
administer chocolate for recovery of strength.
-
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
by Robert Rankin (2002).
See also our blog for
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
More puns than
Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
and an even better plot than my previous favorite,
The Fandom of the Operator.
A serial killer is mowing down the famous elite of Toy Town (now grown into a Toy City)
but thanks to a crack[ed] detective team of a 13-year-old boy and Ed, the teddy bear, ...
Rankin's work
is the love-child of Douglas Adams and Monty Python on a date with Kafka.
A lot of fun and drama, thanks especially to Rankin's excellent CD reading.