Volume 43, Number 14 · September 19, 1996
The Road to Kisses
By Kenneth Maxwell
The True History of Chocolate
by Sophie D. Coe, by Michael D. Coe
Thames and Hudson, 280 pp., $27.50
In 1544 Dominican friars took a delegation of Maya nobles to visit Prince Philip of Spain. Among the presents they brought to his court, together with various kinds of chilies, beans, sarsparilla, maize, liquidambar (a plant of the witch hazel family), and 2000 quetzal feathers, their most precious offering, were receptacles of beaten chocolate. This was, according to Sophie Coe and Michael Coe, the first appearance of chocolate in Europe. The future Philip II, however, seemed more concerned about his visitors' nakedness than their gifts, and may not have been aware of the historic event.
Review, 3338 words
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