The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 47, 1728-1759: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 47, 1728-1759: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
[73] The writer (or more probably his amanuensis) has made an error in
transcribing these sums; "six millions" should read "sixty millions,"
and at the end of the paragraph the amount of chocolate should be
"one hundred and fifty" instead of "fifteen" millions. The remaining
figures are correct.
[74] "In 1618, according to the testimony of Dr. Marradón, of
Marchena, to one hundred cacao-beans must be added a pound and a half
of sugar, two onzas of cinnamon, fourteen grains of Mexican pepper,
a half-onza of cloves, and two reals' weight of anise and annotto; and
one might add almonds, nuts, and orange-flower water. Years afterward
Dr. Colmenero of Ledesma modified this formula, making the paste in
the proportion of one hundred cacao-beans, one-half libra of sugar,
two granos of pepper, anise, cloves, Alexandrian [i.e., white] roses,
logwood, cinnamon, almonds, nuts, and a sufficient quantity of annotto
to give it color."
Until the end of the eighteenth century chocolate was prepared mainly
by hand-labor. "In the seventeenth century, the preparation of the
chocolate was made by artisans, who received twelve reals and an
azumbre [i.e., about half a gallon] of wine for preparing each day the
portion of chocolate from sixteen libras of clear cacao. The chocolate,
thus prepared and sold under the name of 'health chocolate,' often
contained special ingredients, chosen on account of the fashion, or
of the taste of the consumers; and if in those times great praise was
given to the chocolate which contained aromatic essences--vanilla,
amber, and orange--certainly not less famous on that account was
the chocolate of Madrid with its doradilla [i.e., ceterach], that of
Ávila with its pimentón [i.e., a large variety of pepper], and that
of Pamplona with its pepper and ginger. Fray Manuel Ordoñez says,
referring to the paste which we are considering, that 'in the past
century it was sold only in the apothecary shops, like physicians'
prescriptions, for our cure;' and from this citation we may infer
not only that chocolate was regarded as a special medicine, but that
it was considered as a therapeutic agent, worthy of being kept by
the pharmacists of the seventeenth century. Later, in the eighteenth
century, the preparation of chocolate began to be made by the guild of
spice-dealers, its ingredients being reduced to the cacao, cinnamon or
vanilla, and sugar; and the custom became somewhat general of adding
to the paste some biscuit-dough, in order to make it thicker when it
was diluted with water. At the same time when the 'health chocolate'
was sold in the spice-shops, a medicinal chocolate was prepared
in the apothecary shops, in which the principal products of the
pharmacopeia entered as ingredients. As the preparation of chocolate
had become general in the convents, in attempting to compete with the
spice-dealers the friars did not think of making it of better quality;
but, in order to sell it more cheaply, they subtracted from cacao and
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