CHOCOLATE. 167 
days Tusser (1573), who was so well acquainted with the virtues 
and uses of our homely herbs, rhymes concerning “ Endive and 
Suckerie ” thus :— 
** Cold herbes in the garden for agues that burne, 
That ouer strong heate to good temper may turn.” 
The “ Violet plates,” (or tablets), which were a favourite 
confection in the days of the merry monarch Charles the Second, 
were made not simply of sweet violets, but also the heavenly 
blue of Succory flowers entered into their composition. “ Violet 
plate,” it was said by a contemporary writer, “is most pleasant 
and wholesome, and especially it comforteth the heart, and 
inward parts.” ‘The Violet is good to don in potage.” The 
Succory was pronounced by Parkinson (who was physician to 
both Charles and James), to be “a fine cleansing, jovial 
plant.’ Its tap-root is cultivated in France. 
CHOCOLATE. (See Cocoa.) 
CHocoLaATE is a paste, or cake, composed of the kernels of the 
Theobroma cacao fruit, ground up, and combined with sugar, 
vanilla, cloves, cinnamon, and other flavouring substances : 
it is, in fact, ground Cocoa from which the fat has not been 
removed, mixed with white sugar, starch, and flavourings. 
The inferior varieties are made from unfermented beans. The 
Chocolate tree is the Cacao tree, and although its product bears 
the name of Cocoa, it is foreign altogether to the Cocoa-nut tree 
from which Cocoa-nuts are got. Cocoa, which should be spelt 
Cacao, is commonly associated by mistake with the Cocoa Palm, 
or Cocoa-nut Palm. Its genus is really that of the Cacao 
theobroma (food for the gods), the tree being a native of 
America, from Mexico to Peru. Its fruit occurs in egg-shaped 
pods, each of which contains from twenty-five to a hundred 
seeds imbedded in sweetish pulp. These seeds are the Cocoa 
beans, which become, when divested of their husks, Cocoa nibs ; 
and when ground into a paste, sweetened, and flavoured, they 
make Chocolate, as already stated. The oil obtained from the 
seeds when expressed, yields a fat, which does not become 
rancid, and is known as Cocoa butter, being much used in 
pharmacy, because solid at ordinary temperatures. The dry 
powder of the seeds, after a thorough expression of the oil, 
is broma. The crude paste is sometimes dried into Cocoa 
