Crazy for chocolate

According to Peter De Vries, the pictures in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums. As a general rule that may be true, but it's not the case at Chicago's Field Museum, at least not while its "Chocolate" exhibit is on display.

Recently I toured the exhibit, which is replete with artifacts ranging from pre-Columbian ceramics to 20th-century advertising, and I came away not only visually satisfied but with my chocolate cravings abated as well.

Upon entering the museum and purchasing my ticket, I was given a small piece of chocolate, presumably as a souvenir. It didn't last long, but it did tide me over as I surveyed the goodies available in the museum cafe, which is conveniently located just across the hall from the exhibit's starting point. I chose a large brownie to fortify me for the rigors of museum going. Completing the tour I discovered to my delight that the exhibit winds up in a bona-fide chocolate shop where, of course, I took full advantage of the opportunity to load up on more chocolate.

In between the nibbling I discovered informative displays that employed the fields of history, botany, ecology, anthropology and economics to chronicle the story of chocolate from bean to bon bon. And what a story it is. It took the museum staff nearly four years to put together an exhibit that would do it justice.

The story begins in the lush tropical rainforests of Latin America, vividly recreated at the exhibit's entrance. There, gazing at a replica of a cocoa tree, you realize what an eccentric plant it is. It is also, as "The Oxford Companion to Food" notes, a prima donna, an unlikely candidate for the world's third largest agricultural export crop after coffee and sugar. Requiring intense heat and moisture, it thrives only within 20 degrees north or south of the equator.

The tree produces shiny dark green leaves, dainty flowers, and football shaped fruit pods. All sprout simultaneously, but it is the pods, which grow directly on the tree trunk, that are the prized output. They contain cocoa beans, which in their raw state, surrounded in the pod by white pulp and turning purple upon exposure to air, are about as far a cry from a Hershey bar as one could imagine.

But centuries would pass before anyone ever thought of transforming these beans into edible chocolate, so the exhibit next introduces visitors to the ancient civilizations that put them to other uses.

First the ancient Maya, who during the 7th century in the Yucatán peninsula established the earliest known cocoa plantations, took fermented cocoa beans, dried and roasted them, added water and spices, and concocted the world's first chocolate drink. Bitter and pungent, it bore little resemblance to today's hot cocoa, except for its frothy appearance. (The exhibit depicts several pre-Waring Blender methods used by the ancients for whipping the drink into foamy perfection.)

Next the Aztecs got into the act. They conquered the Mayas and the rest of Central America by the year 1200 and, signifying how precious cocoa beans had become by then, exacted them as tribute from subjugated tribes. They regarded cocoa as a luxury drink for the nobility and an offering to the gods. They even anointed newborn babies with chocolate during baptismal rituals. Their emperor, Montezuma, befitting his status and that of the drink itself, imbibed his cocoa from a golden goblet. The Aztecs also used cocoa beans as a form of currency, as shown by an interactive marketplace within the exhibit. Ten beans were enough to buy a rabbit, a dozen enough for the services of a prostitute.

It would only be a matter of time, as the exhibit demonstrates, before the rest of the world found out about chocolate. That occurred, of course, when Columbus encountered the New World, though the intrepid explorer, the first European to taste the stuff, failed to realize chocolate's potential. Fortunately, another Spaniard, Hernán Cortéz, possessed superior gourmet sensibilities and after vanquishing the Mexican natives took cocoa beans and the Aztec utensils used in their preparation back to Spain with him. It didn't take long for drinking chocolate to become a Spanish custom, especially after someone got the sweet idea of adding sugar to cocoa. Spain would monopolize the beverage and keep it a secret for nearly a hundred years.

But word eventually got out, partly as a consequence of the marriage of Spanish Princess Anne to Louis XIII of France. She introduced chocolate to the French court. And from there it spread throughout Europe. Still an aristocratic drink, it soon became popular with the general public with the opening of chocolate houses, the precursors of today's Starbucks.

From there chocolate R&D took off. The exhibit features a timeline relating how the pursuit of a better chocolate drink resulted in so-called "eating chocolate." First came a hydraulic machine for grinding cocoa beans, followed by the cocoa press, and then the invention of the technique of "conching" which is responsible for the refined chocolate confections we demand today. Wide screen color movies illustrating these advances had me salivating as I departed the exhibit for the adjacent gift shop selling all kinds of chocolate memorabilia.

If you go to the exhibit, which runs through the end of the year, you may want to check out other trustworthy sources of chocolate gratification in Chicago which include the Windy City's signature chocolatier, Fannie May (the chain was born on North LaSalle street in 1920), the upscale Vosges Haut-Chocolat on Michigan Avenue, which despite its French name is strictly local, and Marshall Field's, purveyor of dependable Frango Mint Chocolates. When you return you may be sufficiently emboldened to try the following recipe.

Death by Chocolate

With a pound and a half of chocolate, two sticks of butter, nearly a cup of heavy cream, and more than a half dozen eggs this is, indeed, a real killer -- but what a way to go!

Ingredients:

4 cups chocolate chips, divided

2 sticks butter

2/3 cup heavy cream

7 eggs

Directions:

Spray a springform pan with cooking spray, then enclose with foil to make watertight. Melt butter and 2 and 2/3 cups chocolate chips and stir to blend. Gently warm eggs over hot water, then beat until thick and fluffy. By hand carefully fold chocolate mixture into eggs and pour into pan. Place pan in water bath and bake at 425 degrees for 5 minutes. Cover with foil and bake 12-15 minutes longer until puffed up slightly. Melt remaining 1 and 1/3 cups chocolate chips and cream and stir until smooth. Let cool 5 minutes, then carefully pour on top of cake. Refrigerate several hours before serving.

Listen to A Harte Appetite at 8:49 a.m. Fridays and at 11:59 a.m. Saturdays on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Write A Harte Appetite, c/o the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semissourian.com.