Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - HT Navi Mumbai Live
Raising the bar: How gritty beans became beloved chocolate
READ about the earliest recorded mentions of the dish, in an excerpt from The Philosophy of Curry by Sejal Sukhadwala (below)
What is a curry, where does the term come from, and how far has it travelled? These are some of the questions London-based food writer Sejal Sukhadwala seeks to address in her first book, The Philosophy of Curry, released in March.
For two decades, Sukhadwala has researched and written about food history and Indian food, tracing the origins of the latter and examining how it evolved in relation to the rest of the world. She has watched as recipes that survived thousands of years faded from view, appearing only at festivals and weddings. She’s tracked India’s food revolution, from the days when the thali was the norm in urban homes to the rise of dining out and cooking with international ingredients. “People are cooking their grandmothers’ recipes less and less,” she says. But it’s a complex issue, because how long can you hold on to tradition anyway?
The melding and morphing of traditions, influenced by new methods and ingredients from around the world — a trend dating back to the 15th century — informs much of her book on curries, which was commissioned by the British Library as part of its Philosophy series on food and drink.
The first thing Sukhadwala would like readers to know about The Philosophy of Curry is that it doesn’t treat change as the enemy, or “authenticity” as some kind of holy grail. “People’s tastes and palates have always been changing over time. International customs and habits have always
We groan about industrial food processing. “Food was so much healthier and tastier in the past,” we say. While this is true of certain things, it is certainly not true of chocolate.
In the 13th century, the Aztecs first roasted and ground cacao seeds to make a bitter, gritty, unsweetened drink that was reserved for royalty, as an aphrodisiac. Those bitter grounds were a far cry from the smooth, flavour-balanced bars available today.
The change began in Europe. Explorers such as the Italian Christopher Columbus and Spanish Hernan Cortes are credited with first taking cacao beans to Europe in the late 15th century. The Europeans also made beverages from the beans, but instead of using the exotic flavourings of the Aztecs — chilli, wild honey and the peppery achiote — they pivoted to sugar and vanilla.
By the 18th century, hot chocolate (the drink) had become quite popular. But solid chocolate, then a crude bar made of ground cacao seeds mixed with sugar, found few takers. It still had a gritty, crumbly texture you could feel in your mouth.
Then three things happened that catapulted solid chocolate to great success.
First, in 1828, the Dutchman Coenraad Van Houten invented a screw press that could press the cacao bean and separate it into two components: cocoa powder and cocoa butter. Van Houten was thrilled about the cocoa powder and sold it for use in hot chocolate. It was only about two decades later that the value of the cocoa butter became apparent. In 1847, an English chocolate-maker named Joseph Fry II added cocoa butter to cocoa paste, and the gritty chocolate bar turned into a smooth treat.
About 30 years later came the next big change: milk powder. Liquid milk has too short a shelf life for use in chocolate bars. But in 1876, Swiss confectioner Daniel Peter decided to try milk powder (which had been around for some years at this point). The milk tamed the bitterness of the dark chocolate and made the chocolate bar milder.
Two years later came the third revolution. In 1888, Swiss chocolate-maker Rodolphe Lindt invented the conching machine, which could slowly grind a chocolate mixture for days, reducing the size of the average chocolate particle from 300 microns to about 20 microns (for perspective, a human hair is about 75 microns wide). This finely ground chocolate could now be tempered and moulded, and the result was a bar that was creamier and melted in the mouth.
Fast-forward to today. Is the average chocolate bar made with the same techniques the Swiss perfected? In some cases, the answer is yes. But when it comes to the more affordable chocolate bars, the recipe has changed dramatically.
In order for a bar to qualify as “chocolate”, the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) mandates that no fat other than cocoa butter make up more than 5% of the finished product. But cocoa butter is expensive. So some manufacturers add hydrogenated oil and vegetable fat; some add so much of these, in fact, that their bars no longer qualify as chocolate and instead are sold under tags such as “chocolatey”, “milky” or “choclairs”.
Slim fit
Now, even with the right amount of cocoa butter, an affordable chocolate bar for the mass market would be a slender thing. So some chocolate makers keep the cocoa butter ratio intact, but use sugar, their cheapest ingredient, to fluff out the product. Sugar is used to create fillings such as caramel, nougat, marshmallow. Even the air whipped into the sugar matrix is used to create volume. Some bars also use wheat-flour biscuits or wafers to add bulk.
The result is that a “good” chocolate bar, one that showcases the chocolate itself, is always slimmer and lighter than a massmarket one of the same price. It’s also why the less expensive chocolate bars are invariably sweeter.
Meanwhile, even in the pure chocolate bars, some companies use more sugar than is needed. This is to cover up for the poor quality of beans, or for processing errors such as over-roasting of the beans. If, in a 100 gm serving, more than 50 gm (or over half the bar) is “Added Sugars”, then the bar is compensating for something that didn’t turn out right.
A company that handles its chocolate well proudly posts its cocoa content on the front (eg, 70% cocoa). Find one you like with that kind of ratio and a low sugar count (ideally under 25%) and you will have found a product worthy of the tree’s scientific name: Theobroma cacao, from the Greek term for “food of the gods”.
SUKHADWALA DOESN’T BELIEVE IN THE CONCEPT OF ‘AUTHENTICITY’, WHEN IT COMES TO FOOD. CURRY IS A CATEGORY JUST LIKE BREAD OR PIE, SHE SAYS
DARK SECRETS
To reach Swetha Sivakumar with questions or
feedback, email upgrademyfood@gmail.com