60 Fun Facts About Hot Chocolate

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

That pushes the drink's origins well south of the Maya and Aztec lands where Europeans first tasted it.

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?

Beans served as money from at least 400 BC, which is one reason drinking your wealth was a status move.

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

Sweetening it with sugar was a European habit that came much later.

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

The froth was the prized part of the drink; a good head of foam was the whole point.

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

Doctors were not entirely wrong to like it: cocoa flavonoids do have measurable effects on blood vessels.

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

The popular story credits Cortés, but there is no evidence he introduced it.

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

He added that Spaniards who had lived in the country were nonetheless 'very greedy' for it.

London's first chocolate house, an ancestor of the coffee shop, opened in which year?

A pound of chocolate cost 50 to 75 pence, roughly £45 to £65 in modern money, so it was a rich man's habit.

When chocolate first arrived in England in the 1650s, it came via which country?

Spain had kept the drink largely to itself for a century before it spread across the Pyrenees.

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

Francesco Bianco anglicised his name to Francis White; within decades the place was notorious as a gambling house.

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

He is often credited with inventing milk chocolate, but islanders had been boiling cacao shavings with milk long before he arrived.

'Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate', sold in 1750s Soho, was possibly the first chocolate drink with what?

Nicholas Sanders sold it as a medicinal elixir, and Cadbury's later trade cards still invoked Sloane's recipe.

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

The family factory opened in Amsterdam in 1815 and the press cut the butter content of the liquor by nearly half.

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

Coenraad van Houten introduced the process; most cocoa powder in European supermarkets is still Dutch-processed.

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

He was a Quaker, like the Fry and Rowntree families who ran Britain's other great cocoa firms.

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

The full species name is Theobroma cacao, and the stimulant in it, theobromine, borrows the same word.

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

World output that year was 5.87 million tonnes, with Ghana and Indonesia the next biggest producers.

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

The habit is called cauliflory, and jackfruit does the same thing.

Roughly how many seeds does a single cacao pod contain?

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?

French confectioners turned the root sap into a whipped sweet, pate de guimauve, in the 19th century.

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

It melts at about 95°F, which is why a marshmallow dissolves on the tongue and on top of a hot drink.

Alex Doumak's 1956 patent forced marshmallow through tubes into ropes. What is that 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?

By 2019 the brand was selling an estimated 50 million boxes a year.

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

Charles Sanna developed it, and the packets were a way to use up surplus dairy powder.

Which company acquired the Swiss Miss brand in 1990?

Swiss Miss was sold to Beatrice Foods in 1967, and Beatrice was swallowed by ConAgra in 1990.

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

Europe got it in the 1950s under the Nesquik name, adopted worldwide in 1999, and the bunny mascot changed the letter on his collar to match.

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

Chocolate syrup had joined the range in 1981 and strawberry in 1989.

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

It reached Britain in 1909 with a shorter name; the Swiss still call it Ovomaltine.

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

Egg and malt were the headline ingredients; today's version is malt extract, whey and, in some flavours, cocoa.

Ovaltine went along on which famous 1953 expedition?

It had already 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?

The sponsorship ran from 1931 to 1940 and is the source of 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?

Industrial chemist Thomas Mayne created it, and Nestlé's Smithtown factory in New South Wales still turns out more than 13,000 tonnes a year.

Milo is named after what?

Milo of Croton was legendary for his strength, which 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?

The brand holds around 90 percent of the local market there, with Singapore in second place.

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

It is a Day of the Dead and Las Posadas staple, served alongside tamales.

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

The spinning is the subject of a Mexican nursery rhyme, and artisans in Oaxaca and Guerrero still carve them by hand.

Filipino tsokolate is made by dissolving tablets of ground roasted cacao known as what?

It is 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?

'Eh' stood for espeso and 'ah' for aguado, so the guest's importance was decided before the cup arrived.

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

It is served in a tall glass in a metal holder, and some call it a 'remo', meaning oar.

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?

Antoine Rumpelmayer's widow Angelina gave the place its name after his death in 1914.

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

Caffe al Bicerin has served it since the 18th century, and the name is Piedmontese for 'small glass'.

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

It has spawned branches as far away as the Philippines, though several have since closed.

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

Tom Hanks played the Conductor, Santa and the Hobo, among others, through motion capture.

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

The film's budget of around $165 million was a record for an animated feature at the time.

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

He formed the group in London in 1968 with Tony Wilson, and their 'You Sexy Thing' found a second life in The Full Monty.

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

Unusually for the band, it was written by an outsider, Russ Ballard.

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

The restaurant also holds Guinness records for a $1,000 sundae and a $295 hamburger, and it starred in the 2001 film Serendipity.

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

Chocolate chips followed in 1928, two decades after the Kiss.

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

It was developed in England in the late 1920s and reached India in 1948, where it became a household name.

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

Tablets of it 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?

The drink is simply hot chocolate mixed with espresso or coffee, 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?

You dissolve the chocolate 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?

In Germany the melted-chocolate version goes by the same Viennese name to distinguish it from powder-based Trinkschokolade.

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

Whipped cream and marshmallows remain the more common additions, and fat added to defatted cocoa actually improves theobromine uptake.

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

That happens despite the southern-hemisphere summer being under way, and many Peruvians add sweet chocolate syrup to the cup.

Which emperor's court adopted chocolate soon after it reached Spain, making it a fashionable drink?

Cocoa was even given as a dowry when Spanish royals married other European aristocrats, since the beans grew only in the Americas.

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

The new drink supposedly marked the moving of the duchy's capital from Chambéry, and the thick, creamy style still defines Italian hot chocolate.