In 1765, the first chocolate factory in the United States opened, and thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States at the time, tasted it and praised chocolate, praising it as "having health and nutritional advantages". However, the original chocolate was far less delicious than it is now, when it was bitter and astringent, difficult to swallow, and even once ridiculed as a "pig drink". However, before Thomas Jefferson tasted chocolate, the Kangxi Emperor had already eaten chocolate, so how did he evaluate it?
As we all know, the raw material of chocolate is the cacao bean, the fruit of the cacao tree, which is produced in the tropical rainforest of Central America, which is now Mexico. At that time, the Maya who lived there would first roast and ferment the cocoa beans, then grind them into a paste, add peppers, herbs and other ingredients, and then use them to soak water or wine, which was the early "cocoa drink". For a long time after that, people thought that chocolate was just a drink that could be "drunk" and did not develop its value at all.
However, although the cocoa drink tastes bitter, after drinking, it has a refreshing effect, and even some excitement. As a result, the Maya called chocolate "god's food", and after being deified, chocolate was given religious significance and has been revered ever since.
At the beginning of the 16th century, the Spanish explorer Jonando Cortés came to Mexico and found that the local Aztec kings were particularly fond of a cocoa drink. After tasting it, Cortés thought it tasted good, so he brought it back to Spain and planted cocoa trees on a small island in West Africa.
Soon, chocolate spread across Europe, and the royal family of every country praised it. In 1706, Chocolate entered China with the Italian missionary Doro and came to Kangxi. At that time, there were frequent cultural exchanges between China and the West, and there were many novel foods flowing into China, and chocolate was just one of them. The only difference is that many Qing Dynasty people saw that Westerners liked to drink a brown drink called "chocolate", and they did not know what it meant, so they followed the example, calling this drink "Chu Ke La".
In fact, Kangxi was a very enlightened emperor, and he had no resistance to what had come from the West, after all, he had been saved by Western medicine. Before, Kangxi had suffered from malaria, and the imperial doctor in the palace had tried a variety of treatment methods, but it did not work, seeing that Kangxi's condition was getting worse and worse day by day, if there was no good medicine, I was afraid that there would be less evil. At this time, a French missionary paid tribute to the Western medicine, cinchona cream (quinine), which Kangxi took, and sure enough, the medicine was eliminated. That's why he became interested in Western things.
In 1706, Kangxi wanted to try chocolate, and the minister of internal affairs, Wailang Heshiheng, immediately approached Doro and asked him for eight different recipes of chocolate. In addition, in order to avoid Kangxi not understanding, He Shiheng also wrote an instruction manual of more than a thousand words: "Words are hot, sweet and bitter, produced from America... Stir and drink. Unexpectedly, after Kangxi drank the chocolate, he put on a "bitter melon face", he thought that this "medicine" tasted sweet and bitter, the attribute was hot, and it was useless to cure the disease.
Later, Heshiheng went to inquire about Doro and the imperial doctor, who said that chocolate was just a drink, not a medicine, suitable for people with cold diarrhea and unhealthy stomach. After Kangxi learned of this, his face was not happy, he just said "I know" lightly, and there was no follow-up since then. Therefore, after chocolate was rejected by Kangxi, it never entered the Chinese market again, and it was not until the end of the Qing Dynasty that chocolate was gradually accepted by Chinese.