can be a confusing term because until about the end of the 19th century it was often used in English to mean what is properly called cacao. See chocolate: botany and early history; and also chocolate manufacture.
As the term is now understood, cocoa is the substance left after the cocoa butter (needed for enriching chocolate confectionery, see chocolate in the 19th and 20th centuries) has been extracted from the chocolate mass and powdered. It can be used to provide a chocolate flavour in baked goods, icings, and puddings. It is also mixed with sugar and vegetable fat to make ‘chocolate-flavoured coating’, used for covering cakes and biscuits.
However, its most important use is to provide the drink called cocoa, for which purpose it is mixed with sugar and boiling milk or water. And the most important aspect of this use is undoubtedly the brewing of ‘kye’ (as it is known) for those who are keeping a watch at night on the bridge of any ship in the (British) Royal Navy. The art of making the ‘kye’ really strong, so that a spoon stands up in it, requires an apprenticeship of many years.
Not even this naval ‘kye’ can quite match the punch which was delivered by an ancestral ‘cocoa’ prepared by the indigenous Indians of C. America, according to Emerson (1908), in the 16th century. This beverage still had all the cocoa butter in it, but there were other reasons to beware of it:
for, besides being at boiling heat, the beverage also contains a very liberal supply of native peppers, noted the world over for their extreme heat, and one small sip of this chocolate is generally enough to make a man think that he has awakened in another world, and all doubt about which one it is is removed at once. The outside world has very little interest for him at this time. It is the inside one that calls for immediate attention.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Emerson, Edward R. (1908), Beverages, Past and Present, vols i and ii, New York: The Knickerbocker Press.
