122 COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 



associated with coffee, so that the roasting of it is felt 

 to be a romantic occupation. The same poetic atmos- 

 phere surrounded the manufacture of drinking choco- 

 late in the early days : the writers who revealed the 

 secrets of its preparation were conscious that they were 

 giving man a new aesthetic delight and the subject is 

 treated lovingly and lingeringly. One, Pietro Metas- 

 tasio, went so far as to write a " cantata " describing its 

 manufacture. He describes the grinding as being done 

 by a vigorous man, and truly, to grind by hand is a 

 very laborious operation, which happily in more recent 

 times has been performed by the use of power-driven 

 mills. 



Operations on a large scale followed the founding of 

 Fry and Sons at Bristol in 1728, and of Lombart, " la 

 plus ancienne chocolaterie de France/' in Paris in 

 1760. In Germany the first chocolate factory was 

 erected at Steinhunde in 1756, under the patronage 

 of Prince Wilhelm, whilst in America the well-known 

 firm of Walter Baker and Co. began in a small way in 

 1765. From the methods adopted in these factories 

 have gradually developed the modern processes which 

 I am about to describe. 



MODERN PRACTICE. 



As the early stages in the manufacture of cocoa and 

 of chocolate are often identical, the processes which 

 are common to both are first described, and then some 

 individual consideration is given to each. 



(a) Arrival at the Factory. 



The cacao is largely stored in warehouses, from 

 which it is removed as required. It has remarkable 

 keeping properties, and can be kept in a good store for 

 several years without loss of quality. Samples of cacao 

 beans in glass bottles have been found to be in perfect 

 condition after thirty years. Some factories have stores 

 in which stand thousands of bags of cacao drawn from 

 many ports round the equator. There is something 



