From cocoa beans to chocolate
Over 3,500 years ago the Mayans and the Aztecs were the first who loved chocolate but they didn’t eat it – they drank it. They mixed cocoa beans with vanilla or chilli peppers. Cocoa was so important that they used it as money.
Cocoa beans come from cocoa trees. These trees grow in tropical forests around the world, from South America to Indonesia. The beans grow in colourful pods of red, yellow and purple. The beans are in the pods. The trees grow around fifty pods a year, and in each pod there are twenty-sixty beans. Around a hundred beans make a hundred grams of chocolate.
After the pods are picked from the tree, they are opened and the beans come out. The beans are put in special boxes, where they turn brown and start to have their special flavour. Then the beans dry in the sun for fourteen days. After this, they are roasted for about fifteen minutes.
Then they grind the beans with a machine or between two big stone to have cocoa liquor. This is then cooked and mixed for hours or sometimes days until it is just perfect. Here they put sugar, milk and various flavours in the chocolate. After that they heat and cool and heat and cool the cocoa liquor again until it becomes the chocolate you know.
Vocabulary (Szókincs)
| bean – bab | to use – használni | to grow – nőni |
| pod – tok, hüvely (hüvelyes növényé) | to pick – szedni | flavour – íz |
| to dry – száradni | to roast – sütni, pirítani | to grind – őrölni, darálni |
| to melt – olvadni | below – alatt | body temperature – testhőmérseklet |
| to heat – melegíteni | to cool – hűteni |
True (igaz) or false (hamis)? Döntsd el a mondatokról, a szöveg alapján.
The Mayans and the Aztecs paid with cocoa beans.
Cocoa beans grow on trees.
The cocoa pods are green.
There are around 15 pods on a tree every year.
There are 1000 beans in a hundred grams of chocolate.
After picking, the beans are in bags.
The beans are in the sun for 2 weeks.
They cook the cocoa liquor for a few minutes.
They never put sugar in the cocoa liquor.
They heat and cool the liquor only once.
