The Olmec, one of the earliest civilizations in Latin America, were the first to turn the cacao plant into chocolate. They drank their chocolate during rituals and used it as medicine.
Mayan civilization
The Maya seasoned their chocolate by mixing the roasted cacao seed paste into a drink with water, chile peppers and cornmeal, transferring the mixture repeatedly between pots until the top was covered with a thick foam.
1729:
The first mechanical cocoa grinder was invented in Bristol, England by an apothecary, Walter Churchman.
1765:
Chocolate manufacture started in the American colonies at Dorchester, Massachusetts, using beans brought in by New England.
1825:
Young Philippe Suchard opened a chocolate shop near Neuchâtel, a town in the French speaking part of Switzerland. he invented various machines and devices including a special machine to mix sugar and cocoa powder to make the chocolate a homogeneous mass.
1815:
Dutch chemist Coenraad van Houten introduced alkaline salts to chocolate, which reduced its bitterness. The process became known as “Dutch processing”.
1828:
Coenraad van Houten created the cocoa press squeezed the fatty butter from roasted cacao beans, leaving behind a dry cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder that could be mixed with liquids and other ingredients, poured into molds and solidified into edible, easily digestible chocolate.
1847:
British chocolatier J.S. Fry and Sons created the first chocolate bar molded from a paste made of sugar, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter.
1876:
Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter utilized powdered milk developed several years earlier by his neighbor Henri Nestlé to produce the first milk chocolate bar.
1879:
Another Swiss chocolatier Rudolphe Lindt from Berne improved Suchard’s invention and developed another mixing device called “conche”.
1900:
In the United States, Milton Hershey pioneered the assembly-line production of milk chocolate. Timeline of chocolate processing
