272 THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS 



impositions like this. The same is true of choco- 

 late manufacturers. 



In making a cup of cocoa, the cook usually 

 adds sugar. In making chocolate, she does not. 

 Chocolate is a richer beverage than cocoa. The 

 reason is clear once we know how both are made. 

 Cocoa contains all there is in the nibs except the 

 fat, and it should contain nothing more. To make 

 chocolate, the manufacturer grinds the nibs to a 

 fine powder, adds a certain amount of sugar, 

 flavors with vanilla, and mixes these ingredients 

 into a paste, which is moulded into the tablets and 

 cakes we buy. For cooking purposes, some brands 

 of chocolate are unsweetened. But the fat is in 

 all grades. Rich as chocolates are, they are poor 

 stuff if the makers have used glucose for sugar and 

 imitation vanilla extract, with a generous amount 

 of cheap starch taking the place of the cocoa they 

 pretend to use. The cheap chocolates are lacking 

 not only in nutritiousness but in the good flavor 

 of the genuine. 



The shells that are removed from the nibs are 

 not utterly worthless. The drug, theobromine, is ex- 

 tracted from them, as well as from the beans, and 

 they are also used as food for cattle. They con- 

 tain elements that enrich the soil, therefore they 

 are dug in as fertilizer in orchards of cacao trees. 



