TY - BOOK AU - Anonymous TI - The chocolate-plant (Theobroma cacao) and its products AV - SBTX PY - 2025/// CY - Salt Lake City, UT PB - Project Gutenberg KW - Cocoa KW - Chocolate KW - Cocoa products N1 - Release date is 2025-09-10; Charlene Taylor, Harry Lamé and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.); Originally published; Dorchester: Walter Baker and Company, 1890 N2 - The chocolate-plant (Theobroma cacao) and its products by Anonymous is a scientific and industrial pamphlet from the late 19th century. It surveys cacao’s origins, botany, chemistry, cultivation, processing into chocolate and cocoa, their nutritional qualities, and practical culinary uses. The book opens with the pre-Columbian and early colonial history of cacao, describing indigenous roasting, grinding, and foaming methods and the swift spread of chocolate in Europe. It then details the plant’s morphology and growth, the bearing of pods on older wood, shade and irrigation needs, harvesting, fermentation (“sweating”), drying, and major producing regions. A technical chapter characterizes commercial beans microscopically and chemically, noting starch, cellulose, proteins, theobromine, ash, and especially cocoa-butter. Manufacturing chapters explain cleaning, roasting, winnowing to nibs, fine grinding into plain or sweetened chocolate, pressing to reduce fat for breakfast cocoa, and caution against chemically alkalized cocoas that diminish natural flavor. A physiological section argues cacao’s value as real food—combining carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, and theobromine—and explains why partial fat removal can aid digestion while purity and fineness are essential. The closing portion offers cooking guidance and recipes (by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards and Miss Parloa) for properly boiling chocolate and cocoa and for using them in drinks, cakes, icings, ice-cream, puddings, and Bavarian cream. (This is an automatically generated summary.) UR - https://archive.org/details/plantthchocolate00waltrich/page/n3/mode/2up UR - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76852 ER -