The world pays tribute since 2010 to this ancient fruit, the raw material for chocolate, every July 7.
Today is International Cocoa Day and, to celebrate it, at Puro Chocolate we are collecting interesting facts about this ancient fruit, which is used to make one of the most irresistible foods in the world: chocolate.
For a chocolate bar to be considered as such, it must contain at least 35% cocoa.
The first chocolate bars that were made in the world had an approximate proportion of 50% cocoa liquor and 50% sugar.
In the 100th century, a cacao almond was worth the same as a tamale, as well as XNUMX cacao almonds for a whole kettle.
Venezuela was the largest producer and exporter of cocoa in the world for much of the 10.000th century with some XNUMX tons a year.
Francisco de Miranda, at the age of 21, paid part of his expenses to enter the Royal Army with cocoa beans that his father Sebastián de Miranda gave him on the day of his embarkation, on January 25, 1771.
In Venezuela there are more than thirty varieties of cacao of the Criollo type and more than one hundred of the Trinitarian type.
Rubí cocoa is produced in Ecuador, Brazil and the Ivory Coast, a variety with which rosé chocolate is made naturally and whose flavor is quite fruity.
The oldest still operating company in Venezuela is the Hacienda de cacao Chuao, founded in 1660.
The cocoa tree only grows in the equatorial region between 20° north and 20° south and reaches about 7 meters in height.
Cocoa was in Venezuela the first product marketed abroad and almost the only one during the colonial period.
The cocoa fruit, called the pod, measures between 15 and 25 centimeters in length and 7,5 to 10 cm in diameter.
Researchers in Spain produce chocolate wrappers with cocoa shell waste.
The pods of the cacao tree contain between 20 and 40 seeds, each about 2,5 cm in length, covered in a sweet and sour pulp that can be white, cream or purple in color called mucilage.
A kilo of chocolate made with Venezuelan criollo cocoa is marketed by fine chocolatiers in Europe for more than 100 euros.
The cocoa-based drink prepared by the Mayans and Aztecs during the pre-Hispanic era was frothy, bitter, and sometimes spicy.
In the western Venezuelan states, from Táchira to the Sur del Lago subregion, made up of the municipalities of Mérida and Zulia, there are at least nine varieties of criollo cacao.
