Chocolate: Food of The Gods and Elixir of Empire

Cacao beans were used thousands of years ago to make drinking chocolate and as currency. In the early 17th century they were used to make a beverage for the aristocracy of continental Europe. In time, its use spread to European coffee houses. Edible chocolate was initially of a dark form; milk chocolate came into manufacture at a later stage. Well-known English companies, such as Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree, had their origins in the 19th century. Whittaker’s dates its chocolate from 1896. Frieda Looser teaches in the Academic Skills Centre of the University of Canterbury. She has tutored and lectured in a number of University courses since 1990. She has two books which were published by the Canterbury University Press in 2002. She has led five UC history study tours to Britain from 2006-2010, and her own study tours to the Highlands and Scottish Islands, Normandy, Brittany, Ireland and Spain. She is leading a study tour to Wessex in the south of England in 2017.