Planches pour l'Encyclopédie ou pour le Dictionaire raisonné des sciences des arts libéraux, et des arts méchaniques avec leur explication, second edition; Plancher 5, Chocolat et Moules pour les Fromages

Lucques : chez Vincent Giuntini imprimeur, t. 3, 1767 Sala del Dottorato, III-3-06

The illustration on display, by engraver F. Fambrini, shows the processing of cocoa for the production of chocolate in the XVIII Century in the shop of a confiseur.

Cocoa (and chocolate) arrived in Europe towards the middle of the XVI Century as the main component of a corroborating and curative beverage, and during the XVIII Century it became a common ingredient, used by pastry chefs and confiseurs, that were considered separate professions from that of simple bakers and cooks. In time, the consumption of energetic beverages such as hot chocolate, tea and coffee grew popular: the XVIII Century is characterized as the “Golden Age” of European Cafés, gathering places of the emerging middle-class (bourgeoisie) in opposition to the traditional aristocratic venues and also to the popular taverns and alehouses.

The illustration shows how cocoa was toasted in an iron heater over a big fire (fig. 1), then thinly ground and reduced to a brown-reddish paste in a heated mortar (fig. 2 and 3) and finally flattened with an iron pin roll on a heated flat stone. After reducing the mix to a soft paste, sugar was added in order to obtain the chocolat de santé (chocolate of health), thus called to tell it apart from other kinds of chocolate that were flavoured with vanilla and contained more sugar, cinnamon, cloves, citrus peels, jasmine and even amber pearls.