The first people clearly known to have discovered the secret of cacao were the Classic Period Maya 250-900 A.D. The Maya and their ancestors in Mesoamerica took the tree from the rainforest and grew it in their own backyards, where they harvested, fermented, roasted, and ground the seeds into a paste. When mixed with water, chile peppers, cornmeal, and other ingredients, this paste made a frothy, spicy chocolate drink.
By 1400, the Aztec empire dominated a sizeable segment of Mesoamerica. The Aztecs traded with Maya and other peoples for cacao and often required that citizens and conquered peoples pay their tribute in cacao seeds—a form of Aztec money.
Until the 1500s, no one in Europe knew anything at all about the Mayan chocolate drink. Spain’s search for a route to riches led its explorers to the Americas and introduced them to chocolate and eventually, the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs made it possible to import chocolate back home, where it quickly became a court favorite; within 100 years, the love of chocolate spread throughout the rest of Europe.
Chocolate is made from the cocoa bean, found in pods growing from the trunk and lower branches of the Cacao Tree, which will grow only within a latitude of 10 degrees north or south of the equator, at about 250' (76m) above sea level.
The first mention of chocolate being eaten in solid form is when bakers in England began adding cocoa powder to cakes in the mid 1600's. Then in 1828 a Dutch chemist, Johannes Van Houten, invented a method of extracting the bitter tasting fat or "cocoa butter" from the roasted ground beans, his aim was to make the chocolate drink smoother and more palatable, however he unknowingly paved the way for solid.
Chocolate as we know it today first appeared in 1847 when Fry & Sons of Bristol, England - mixed Sugar with Cocoa Powder and Cocoa Butter (made by the Van Houten process) to produce the first solid chocolate bar then, in 1875 a Swiss manufacturer, Daniel Peters, found a way to combine (some would say improve, some would say ruin) cocoa powder and cocoa butter with sugar and dried milk powder to produce the first milk chocolate.
When manufacturers list the percentage of chocolate on a label, they often use the terms "X% of cocoa solids" or "X% of cocoa." What they're actually referring to is the total percentage by weight of cocoa solids and cocoa butter combined, in other words, the total percentage of ingredients derived purely from the cocoa bean. The remaining weight of the chocolate will consist of sugar, lecithin (a soy-derived emulsifier), and typically vanilla. Lesser quality chocolates also include other fats (like palm kernel oil) and flavorings.
