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Cooking with Chocolate: Cooking Tips & Delicious Chocolate Recipes

Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes

COCOA AND CHOCOLATE

"Time and experience," he says further, "have shown that chocolate, carefully prepared, is an article of food as wholesome as it is agreeable; that it is nourishing, easy of digestion, and does not possess those qualities injurious to beauty with which coffee has been reproached; that it is excellently adapted to persons who are obliged to a great concentration of intellect; in the toils of the pulpit or the bar, and especially to travellers; that it suits the most feeble stomach; that excellent effects have been produced by it in chronic complaints, and that it is a last resource in affections of the pylorus. 

"Some persons complain of being unable to digest chocolate; others, on the contrary, pretend that it has not sufficient nourishment, and that the effect disappears too soon. It is probable that the former have only themselves to blame, and that the chocolate which they use is of bad quality or badly made; for good and well-made chocolate must suit every stomach which retains the slightest digestive power.  "In regard to the others, the remedy is an easy one: they should reinforce their breakfast with a pâté, a cutlet, or a kidney, moisten the whole with a good draught of soconusco chocolate, and thank God for a stomach of such superior activity.  "This gives me an opportunity to make an observation whose accuracy may be depended upon.  "After a good, complete, and copious breakfast, if we take, in addition, a cup of well-made chocolate, digestion will be perfectly accomplished in three hours, and we may dine whenever we like.

Out of zeal for science, and by dint of eloquence, I have induced many ladies to try this experiment. They all declared, in the beginning, that it would kill them; but they have all thriven on it and have not failed to glorify their teacher.  "The people who make constant use of chocolate are the ones who enjoy the most steady health, and are the least subject to a multitude of little ailments which destroy the comfort of life; their plumpness is also more equal. These are two advantages which every one may verify among his own friends, and wherever the practice is in use."  In corroboration of M. Brillat-Savarin's statement as to the value of chocolate as an aid to digestion, we may quote from one of Mme. de Sévigné's letters to her daughter:  "I took chocolate night before last to digest my dinner, in order to have a good supper.

I took some yesterday for nourishment, so as to be able to fast until night. What I consider amusing about chocolate is that it acts according to the wishes of the one who takes it."  Chocolate appears to have been highly valued as a remedial agent by the leading physicians of that day. Christoph Ludwig Hoffman wrote a treatise entitled, "Potus Chocolate," in which he recommended it in many diseases, and instanced the case of Cardinal Richelieu, who, he stated, was cured of general atrophy by its use. 

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