EARLY USE OF COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 25 
ingredients must be beaten by itself, and then all be put into the 
vessel where the cacao is, which you must stir together with a spoon, 
and then take out that paste, and put it into the mortar, under which 
there must be a little fire, after the confection is made; but if more 
fire be put under than will only warm it, then the unctuous part will 
dry away. The Achiotte also must be put in in the beating, that it 
may the better take the colour. All the ingredients must be searced, 
save only the cacao, and if from the cacao the dry shell be taken, it 
will be the better. When it is well beaten and incorporated (which 
will be known by the shortnesse of it) then with a spoon (so in the 
Indias is used) is taken up some of the paste, which will be al- 
most liquid, and made into tablets, or else 
without a spoon put into boxes, and when it 
is cold it will be hard. 
‘“ Those that make it into tablets put a 
spoonful of the paste upon a piece of paper 
(the Indians put it upon the leaf of a plain- 
tain tree), where, being put into the shade 
(for in the sun it melts and dissolves), it 
grows hard; and then bowing the paper or 
leaf, the tablet fals off by reason of the fat- 
nesse of the paste. But if it be put into anything of earth or wood, 
‘* MOLINETS ”’ 
it sticks fast, and will not come off but with scraping or breaking. 
The manner of drinking it is divers; the one (being the way most 
used in Mexico) is to take it hot with Atolle, dissolving a tablet in 
hot water, and stirring and beating it in the cup, when it is to be 
drunk, with a Molinet, and when it is well stirred to a scumme or 
froth, then to fill the cup with hot Atolle, and so drink it sup by sup. 
Another way is that the chocolate, being dissolved with cold water 
and stirred with the Molinet, and the scumme being taken off and put 
into another vessel, the remainder be set upon the fire, with as much 
sugar as will sweeten it, and when it is warme, then to powre it upon 
