In the first minute of her presentation, Faith Deering told her audience that by the end of the hour, they would have a new appreciation for flies — specifically, the very tiny ones we know to be called “midges.”
“Let me tell you, without flies, there would be no chocolate,” said Deering, a museum educator at Historic Deerfield.
The lecture on Jan. 20 explored the botany of the cacao tree, how it is pollinated and how it is prepared in today’s factories — from bean to bar. It was the second lecture in a three-part series on the history of chocolate, and how it was first introduced into the American diet in the late 17th century. The first of the series, which was held Jan. 6 via Zoom, imparted the history of chocolate, from its introduction to London and Boston, to its use as an early medicine.
Deering’s webinar took a deeper dive into the production of chocolate, beginning with the Theobroma cacao — originally found in forests of the Amazon basin, and known for its large green leaves, light pink blossoms and large, reddish-orange fruit called pods.
“Most likely, it was the pods that first attracted human attention,” Deering said.
The insides of the pods — often dropped to the ground by animals — were full of a pulp that humans made into a drink. The leftover pulp and bitter, enclosed seeds were tossed aside, where they began to ferment in the heat.
“It’s easy to imagine the sticky fermented mass being cleaned up and tossed into a fire, getting accidentally roasted and releasing the enticing aroma of chocolate,” Deering said.
It was natural human curiosity, of course, that led to the tasting of these seeds.
“It was delicious,” she said.
Aztecs and Mayans wild-farmed the chocolate tree, cultivating it in small, garden-like patches throughout the forest, Deering explained. With European exploration and colonization, the Theobroma cacao was brought elsewhere along the equator — creating what would later become known as the “chocolate belt.”
“Wherever cacao is grown, it is very hard manual work, and probably the world’s most labor-intensive crop,” she said.
In a disclaimer, Deering acknowledged the exploitation of child labor that has been exposed in certain parts of the world — a result of growing demand and cheap labor.
“As the chocolate industry has grown over the years, so has the demand for cheap cacao beans, and thus very cheap labor,” she explained. “… While this exploitation is recognized worldwide, many attempts have been made to change these practices, and they’re still ongoing.”
She said as a presenter of the webinar, “these abhorrent practices must be mentioned.”
Deering talked through the steps of the labor process — from the planting of the tree to packing the beans into bags to be shipped to factories, where they are processed into chocolate products.
It was during this portion of the presentation where her audience learned the purpose of the midge, or “the annoying” flies known for circling your head as you walk through the woods.
“It is this midge, the Ceratopogonidae, that has been identified as the main pollinator — the most important pollinator of Theobroma cacao,” she said.
And as she’d said before, without them, there would be no chocolate.
From the Cadbury factory in the United Kingdom to the Hershey factory in the United States, the production of chocolate is a multi-step process, Deering said.
Acknowledging that each company likely has its own production process, the nine steps below are a “composite list” of the standard steps that often take place in chocolate factories.
1. Sorting and cleaning the beans of dirt, sand, sticks and stones
2. Roasting the beans
3. Cracking and winnowing the beans
4. Blending of various nibs (crumbled bits of dried cacao beans)
5. Grinding nibs in mixing machine, which generates enough heat to melt the cacao butter in the nibs — resulting in chocolate liqueur (very melted chocolate, which hardens when it cools)
6. Pressing and mixing: Extracting the cacao butter from the chocolate liqueur. The chocolate liqueur that doesn’t become cocoa powder becomes chocolate. Cacoa butter is added back to press to create the smooth, melting flavor of chocolate.
7. Conching: The final grinding and mixing of the chocolate
8. Tempering: Chocolate is put through controlled temperature changes to cool
9. Molding
“After step nine is really the packaging, the marketing and the selling of chocolate — with the bars of chocolate and cocoa powder that we need to make our chocolate pies,” Deering said.
In her closing remarks, she made one plea —
“Please don’t swat those tiny flies that you may see, flying around your chocolate.”
The final installment of the series on Feb. 3 is called “Breakfasting on Chocolate: An Open-Hearth Cooking Demonstration” with Ellen Zale, the guide and hearth cook at Historic Deerfield.
The webinar will demonstrate how to prepare an 18th-century cup of hot chocolate.
Registration, which is free to members and $10 per session for non-members, has reopened for those who haven’t already registered for the series, but wish to participate in the final installment in the series.
To register, visit the Historic Deerfield website at https://bit.ly/39ToUeE.