Cocoa, Coffee, Tea, Chocolate

Background to Cacao, Cocoa and Drinking Chocolate

• 1544 The term cacao entered the Spanish language around the mid-16th century, with a documented mention of cacao beans and a cacao drink being gifted to Philip II of Spain in 1544 by a delegation of Kekchi Mayan people in Mexico. The original Mesoamerican drink (xocoatl) was cold, bitter, and spiced with chilli. First published around 1579 having the meaning "bitter water", it was recorded as "chocolate" in English in 1604. Finding it "fit for pigs", the Spanish transformed it by serving it hot and adding cane sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon. A guarded secret at the Spanish court, it wasn't till 1615 that cacao breached French borders when Anne of Austria (daughter of King Philip III of Spain) married King Louis XIII of France. She brought the Spanish court custom of drinking chocolate at breakfast to Paris.
• Back in 1555 Coco in English (referring to the fruit of the coconut palm) was first recorded in 1555 in a translation by Richard Eden. They were earlier known in English as "Indian" Beans, or "Great" Beans.
  • Borrowed into English from Portuguese and Spanish, so named because the three depressions on the shell resembled a grinning face.
  • 1577-1580. Sir Francis Drake in the West Indies refers to "a kind of fruit called cocos".
  • 1599. Coconut as an individual word has been located by the Merriam Webster Dictionary in 1599.
  • 1625 Coconut Tree The earliest known use of the term "coconut tree" is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1625 in the writings of Dr. Layfield.
• 1670 Jamaica Following the British invasion of Jamaica in 1655 (under Oliver Cromwell) Spain ceded the Colony of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in the 1670 Treaty of Madrid. Under British rule, the island became a hugely profitable possession, producing large quantities of sugar for export.
• 1689 Sir Hans Sloane a seller of "medications" in London is said to have popularized "drinking chocolate" after his visit to Jamaica in 1687. By the 1750s, a Soho grocer named Nicholas Sanders claimed to be selling Sloane's recipe as a medicinal elixir, perhaps making "Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate" the first brand-name milk chocolate drink.
• 1707 Cocoa seeds (as a term) was first published in English in Sir Hans Sloane's "A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica". As a new spelling it confused cocoa with coco and cacao.
• 1755 The printers of Samuel Johnson's dictionary ran together the two entries for coco and cacao, after which it has never been undone. Cocoa has been the regular spelling in the UK and Australia, Canada and the US ever since.
• 1824 Cadbury Brothers form Cadburys in London selling tea coffee and drinking chocolate.
  • 1842 Cadburys sells French Eating Chocolate.
• 1867 Peter's Chocolate in Switzerland Milk Bar in 1875.

Coffee Shops

• 1652 First coffee shop opens in London "with coffee made from the ground and roasted seeds of a tree originally native to Arabia and Abyssinia" c. 1600, from Dutch koffie, from Turkish kahveh, from Arabic qahwah which Arab etymologists connected with a word meaning "wine," but it is perhaps rather from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, a home of the plant.

Tea Shops

Tea (also known as Char) was from China. It was seen in Paris in 1636, and the practice of drinking it had been introduced into England by 1644, with wealthy merchants, politicians, and physicians who had ties to Dutch traders secretly drinking it at home. It was kept under literal lock and key in expensive wooden tea caddies.

• 1657 First Public Sale: Thomas Garway became the first person in England to sell tea as both a leaf and a hot drink at his London coffeehouse in Exchange Alley
• 1706 First Tea Shop: Thomas Twining acquired Tom's Coffee House on the Strand in London, transforming it into a specialty store where women could openly browse and buy loose-leaf tea, which you can still visit today at the Twinings Flagship Store.
• 1864 First Public Tearoom: The manager of London's Aerated Bread Company (ABC) started serving food and tea to customers, creating Britain's first true commercial public tearoom.
• 1880s First Scottish Tearoom: Stuart Cranston established the first dedicated tea room in Glasgow, Scotland, paving the way for larger social chains.

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