De l’arbre à cacao au chocolat : voyage à la source des arômes et des saveurs

摘要

To crunch some chocolate, to taste a tender filling, to savour a cup of smooth and frothy hot chocolate do not let us suppose that these greedy pleasures, it is to the plant with xanthine that we owe them! A singular tree, a cacao tree, the “cacahuacuahuitl” of the earliest Mesoamericans peoples. Of the nahuatl, let us pass in the Latin and it is Linné in 1753 that calls him Theobroma cacao “Cacao food of the gods”. That of understood powers! Since decade, techniques of mass spectrometry and chromatogram allowed the study of residues found on fragments of pottery resulting from diverse archaeological sites of Mesoamerica, and the identification of methylxanthines, among which the caffeine, and the Theobromine (unique marker of the cocoa). About 2000 years before JC, well before the Mayas, Mokayas and Olmecs, had domesticated the cacao-tree and knew how to transform its seeds into a “chocolate beverage”. Today, quite as a great wine, the chocolate has its countries(soils), its vineyards, its aromatic and sensory characteristics. Pass of pod to the tablet recover from a complex alchemy and from specific processing. Certain stages play an essential role on the quality and the taste.