Ingredients · Flavouring

Cacao

Theobroma cacao · Malvaceae (mallow family)

Cacao
Cacao nibs — roasted, shelled bean kernels, broken into pieces. Four products carry them. Unlike cocoa powder they are not sweetened or alkalised, so what you taste is the bean itself: bitter, roasted, faintly fruity, with real cocoa butter in it that gives an infusion a rounder body. In a tea blend they are the part you can see and, if you fish one out, chew.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed
KindFlavouring
CaffeineContains a little caffeine — 0.1 to 0.7 per cent, against about 1.2 per cent in dry coffee beans
Where it is fromIvory Coast, Ghana (production); Amazon (native)
TasteBitter and roasted with a faint fruitiness; real cocoa butter gives the cup body

How to use it

Steeped whole in a blend, where they give a dark roasted note without sweetness. Also eaten as they are, or over yogurt and oatmeal. They do not dissolve — they are pieces, not powder, and they will sit in the bottom of the pot.

With food

Mint. Orange. Chile. Coconut. Vanilla. Banana. Coffee. Cream. Raspberry.

With spices

Chile and cinnamon, in the Mexican direction. Cardamom. Vanilla. Nutmeg. Black pepper.

With tea

Rooibos, which is the usual base for a chocolate blend here. Black tea. Pu-erh. Peppermint.

Its story

Where it comes from

The cacao tree is native to the Amazon rainforest and was first domesticated at least 5,300 years ago in equatorial South America, by the Mayo-Chinchipe culture, before reaching Mesoamerica around 3,800 years ago. World production in 2022 was 5.87 million tonnes, led by Ivory Coast with 38 per cent, then Ghana and Indonesia. One fact the trade does not advertise: as of 2017, approximately 2.1 million children in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire were involved in harvesting cocoa. Our lot names no origin, which means we cannot say anything about how it was grown.

What happened

Theobroma means food of the gods, and for most of its history cacao was a drink rather than a bar. It was consumed more than 3,000 years ago by pre-Hispanic cultures along the Yucatán, including the Maya, and by the Olmec before them, for ceremonial purposes. The Aztecs prized it enough that Moctezuma II is said to have taken no other beverage than chocolate. The word cocoa is simply a variant of cacao, probably through confusion with coco — so the distinction people now draw between the two is a modern convention laid over a spelling mistake.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

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Other ways in

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