Cacao beverage

Beverages made from the flesh and seeds of the fruit of the Theobroma cacao tree have been consumed for thousands of years.^[1]

At the point of first contact with Europeans, chocolate was an important beverage in Mesoamerican culture and society. It was prepared by removing cacao seeds from their pods and putting them through a process of fermentation, drying, sometimes roasting, grinding, and mixing with water.^[1] However, due to the limits of archeological evidence and techniques, when such a drink originated is unclear. As late as the Mesoamerican Classic period (circa 250–900 CE), drinking chocolate and other cacao beverages cannot be distinguished.^[2] For context, cacao has been domesticated and used since around 3300 BC (5300 BP).^[3] In South America, traditional cacao beverages are made with the pulp rather than the seed. This is drunk as a juice, or is fermented to make an alcoholic drink known as chicha. The same alcoholic cacao beverages have historically been made in Mesoamerica. While evidence of cacao consumption can be drawn from traces of the active ingredient theobromine on pottery remnants, such chemical analysis cannot distinguish cacao beverages like chicha from chocolate.^[1]

Besides chicha and juice, cacao is consumed in a range of beverages in South and Central America today. In Suchitepéquez, Guatemala, women toast cacao at home and mill the resulting beans by machine or, more rarely, by hand. This is used to make a range of beverages, made up of combinations of sugar, annatto for colour, spices, toasted corn and Theobroma bicolor, a species related to cacao also known as pataxte. Some of these include tixte (cacao, achiote, pataxte and rice), panecito (toasted cacao, pataxte, cloves, cumin, sacred earflower and corn), and pinol (toasted cacao, pataxte, cumin, and corn).^[4]

In San Bernardino, a town in the region, an atole of corn and rice is made with cacao on feast days under the name pozunke. This is drunk by itself, but also serves as the base for more elaborate preparations served on days such as Good Friday and Day of the Dead. These require cooks to form a dough with peeled, roasted and unroasted cocoa beans, pataxte, masa, and corn tortillas, broken apart and soaked in water. As the dough is kneaded, cold water or ice is poured over at the same time as heated atol, drawing a prized foam of cocoa butter and corn to the surface that is set aside. More atol is added, now boiling, and then the drink is poured from a height to generate more foam and the drink served with the initial foam.^[4]

Other chocolate and cacao drinks in Central and South America include tascalate, tejate, pozol, popo, pinolillo, and champurrado.