Great Treatise on Chocolate

Included 145 recipes

Here is the astonishing history of the cacao tree, from its first use by South Americans over 5000 years ago, to its discovery by the Spanish conquistadors via the Mexicas and the Mayans and its rapid expansion to Europe firstly, then the rest of the world and its various stages of integration and rejection, intellectual, medical, and religious before turning into a luxury item and an object of conquest, then simply a product for personal or shared pleasure growing in popularity and consumption.

This Great Treatise on Chocolate tells about the ingenuity of men in transforming this drink, reserved for the elite, to one that is universally accessible to everyone, for better or worse: for fraud, traffic, greed, and slavery pepper its history.

It reveals the secrets of its production, from bean to bar, its transformation into a variety of pure or combined forms with various ingredients and its vast possibilities as an ingredient in both sweet and savoury recipes.  It escorts the reader not only to the country where it is cultivated but also to meet these chocolaty dishes that enchant men, women and children from the Arctic Circle to Madagascar, from Eastern Canada to South Australia, from Patagonia to North East Russia.

So is this just another book on Chocolate?  Absolutely not.  As, although there are already many books on chocolatey, some talk only partially about its history, others cover plantations and trade, while still others only provide recipes.  This Great Treatise on Chocolate covers all these areas – is magnificently illustrated by remarkable colour plates– and raises a question to which we can easily guess the answer:  Can we imagine a world without chocolate today?