TDG: Foodbuzz: Edible Art

[Fat Guy]

Here's the New York Times coverage. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .

http://nytimes.com/2003/06/10/science/10CHOC.html

[Ellen Shapiro]

Everyone certainly seems to be impressed by the ancient piece of chocolate. Admittedly, because there was such a buzz going about it, I (having missed it the first time through) insisted on going back through the exhibit to find it. Let's just say I'd have been much more excited about it had there not been so much hype generated--by the time I saw it, I found it difficult not to be disappointed about the pebble-sized chocolate--no matter how ancient.

[Fat Guy]

Some fun chocolate facts, courtesy of the AMNH's clever researchers:

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About the cacao tree

• The seed pods of the cacao tree grow not on its branches but directly from the trunk.

• Each pod is about the size of a pineapple and holds 30 to 50 seeds—enough to make about seven 1.5 oz. milk chocolate bars or two dark chocolate bars.

• Cacao flowers are pollinated by midges, tiny flies that live in the leaf litter, rotting leaves, and other debris that fall to the forest floor at the base of the tree. Midges have the fastest wings in the world, capable of beating 1,000 to 2,000 times per second.

• Today cacao trees are endangered by natural threats, such as the witch’s broom fungus and other diseases and pests. Along with the rest of the rain forest, they are also threatened by lumber companies, which harvest the taller trees that shelter the cacao and help maintain the population of midges.

• Cacao seeds are not sweet. They contain the chemicals caffeine and theobromine, which give the seeds a bitter taste.

• Theobroma, part of the scientific name of the cacao tree, means “food of the gods” in Greek.

• Cacao is not related to the coconut palm or to the coca plant, the source of cocaine.

• Africa is now the source of more than half the world’s cacao, while Mexico, where cacao may have been first domesticated, provides only 1.5 percent.

Chocolate as food and medicine

• It takes four cacao seeds to make one ounce of milk chocolate, and 12 seeds to make one ounce of dark chocolate.

• Although today we tend to think of chocolate as a solid, for 90 percent of its history it was consumed in liquid form.

• Some of the earliest European cocoa-makers were apothecaries seeking medicinal uses of the plant.

• Cacao seeds contain significant amounts of natural antioxidants called flavenoids, substances also found in red wine, green tea, and fruits and vegetables. Antioxidants are associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and some cancers. At the same time, prepared chocolate carries a heavy load of saturated fats and calories.

• Chocolate contains two stimulants also found in coffee—caffeine and theobromine—but in relatively small amounts. Fifty M&Ms, for example, have about as much caffeine as a cup of decaffeinated coffee.

• Purdue University scientists are currently testing a cacao husk extract as a possible inhibitor of HIV.

Who eats chocolate?

• As far back as the late 1700s, the people of Madrid consumed nearly 12 million pounds of chocolate a year. Today, 15 of the 16 leading per-capita chocolate-consuming countries are in Europe, with Switzerland leading the pack. (The United States, as of 1998, was number nine.)

• The average American eats 12 pounds of chocolate each year. In 1998, total chocolate consumption was 3.3 billion pounds. (Americans, in 1998, spent $13 billion on chocolate.)

• Mexicans consume chocolate more as a traditional drink and a spice than as a candy. They use it to make the sauce mole used in Mexican cuisine, and offer chocolate drinks at wedding ceremonies and birthday parties.

• Although chocolate’s popularity is growing in China and Japan, there is still comparatively little “chocolate culture” in Asia. The Chinese, for example, eat only one bar of chocolate for every 1,000 eaten by the British.

• Although a great deal of chocolate is grown in Africa, Africans do not consume much chocolate—it is mostly just exported.

[Fat Guy]

Daily News coverage:

http://www.nydailynews.com/06-11-2003/ente...53p-82958c.html

[Fat Guy]

NY1 News coverage:

http://www.ny1.com/ny/Search/SubTopic/inde...search_result=1

[Fat Guy]

By the way, if you're not in New York (where the exhibition is now) or in Chicago or LA (where it has been already), you can catch it in several other cities over the course of the next three years. Here's the complete schedule:

2002

February 14 – December 31 The Field Museum

2003

February 16 – May 11 Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles, CA

June 14 – September 7 American Museum of Natural History. New York, NY

October 11, 2003 - January 4, 2004 Bishop Museum, Honolulu, HI

2004

February 14 – May 9 Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston, TX

June 12 – September 5 Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA

October 9 – January 2 Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, FL

2005

February 5 – May 1 San Diego Natural History Museum San Diego, CA

June 11 – September 5 California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA

October 8 – January 1 Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee, WI

2006

February 4 – April 30 Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta, GA

[Fat Guy]

From the New York Post (Steve Klc quoted briefly within):

http://www.nypost.com/living/36508.htm

And more from the New York Times (this article is by William Grimes):

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/arts/des...ign/13CHOC.html

Two things to note in the NYT article: 1) Grimes expresses surprise at the $17 admission price but fails to note that the price includes museum admission which is $12 (suggested) already. 2) Very unusual to see the Times use a posed PR photo.

[Fat Guy]

So, has anybody dropped by -- if not to see the exhibition, at least to see the sculptures?

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A chocolate timeline, courtesy of the AMNH's researchers:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHOCOLATE

1800–300 B.C.E. Cacao was most likely first domesticated in the humid lowlands of the Mexican Gulf Coast or Central America.

200–900 C.E. The first conclusive evidence of chocolate consumption dates from the Classic Period of the Ancient Maya of Mexico and Central America. The Maya made it into a spicy drink that they used in ceremonies, and traded it to people who couldn’t grow their own.

1200–1500 The Aztec were among those who had to trade for cacao. To them, chocolate was a luxury, a drink for warriors and nobility, used in rituals and ceremonies. They also used cacao seeds as currency.

1519 The Spanish, searching for gold in the New World, instead found cacao. Hernando Cortés tasted cacahuatl, a cacao-based drink enjoyed by the great Aztec ruler Montezuma II, and observed that the Aztec treated cacao beans as priceless treasures. He subsequently brought the beans back to Spain where sweeteners were added to the chocolate drink. Enjoyed by nobility, its formula was kept a secret. Eventually the secret was revealed and the drink’s fame spread throughout Europe.

1657 The first English chocolate house opened. Before long, the English, Dutch, and French were so enamored of chocolate that they set out to colonize cacao-growing lands of their own. The chocolate trade that resulted was built on a system of forced labor and slavery of Mesoamerican and African peoples.

1700–1800 There were nearly 2,000 chocolate houses in London alone.

In Italy, chocolate was the preferred drink of the Vatican; the cardinals even had it brought in while they were in conference to elect a new pope. While the Aztec used chocolate as a drink only, Italians pushed it to new culinary heights. They began experimenting with chocolate as a flavoring in everything from soup to polenta, and even dipped liver in chocolate and fried it.

1776 A Frenchman named Doret invented a hydraulic machine to grind cacao seeds into a paste. Not long afterwards, this technology was replaced by the steam engine, making it even easier to produce large amounts of chocolate.

1828 A Dutch chemist, Coenraad van Houten, invented the cocoa press, which extracts cocoa butter from cacao beans. This makes chocolate more consistent and cheaper to produce.

1847 Fry & Sons of Bristol, England, introduced the first solid chocolate for eating. The family—who, like several of the early chocolate dynasties, were Quakers—boycotted cacao from parts of the world where working conditions were no better than slavery.

1868 Richard Cadbury introduced the first box of chocolates—and later, the first Valentine’s Day candy box.

1870s In Switzerland, Daniel Peter and Henri Nestlé developed the world’s first milk chocolate bar, using Nestlé’s creation, powdered milk. That same year, Rodolphe Lindt invented a machine that churns the paste squeezed from cacao seeds into a smooth blend, giving chocolate a mellow texture.

1893 Pennsylvania confectioner Milton S. Hershey discovered German chocolate processing equipment at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He bought the machinery, eventually building a chocolate factory in the hills of southern Pennsylvania. Today, it is the largest chocolate manufacturing facility in the world.

1926–27 The New York Cocoa Exchange, Inc., was established.

1930 There were nearly 40,000 different kinds of chocolate sold in the United States.

1941–45 Nearly all the chocolate produced in the United States was earmarked for the military during World War II. After the war, Hershey’s received the Army-Navy E award for civilian contribution to victory. Today, United States Army D-rations include three four-ounce chocolate bars.

1982 Chocolate went to space on the United States space shuttle Columbia.

[Aquitaine]

Just thought I'd note that Slow Food Number 38 has a special report on chocolate -- specifically, articles that focus on politics, history, geopolitics, social issues...

http://www.slowfood.com/img_sito/riviste/n.../38/slow38.html

Links to all the articles at the above URL.... (if I got it right). The links aren't underlined, by the way, but they work....

I love chocolate, but I confess that I tend to forget that we should be aware that it comes to us -- as does coffee and sugar -- at a great cost to others....

[Cleo]

I thought the exhibition was pretty dull overall. I had read only part of this thread before we went, and my expectations were not that high. But I completely forgot about the sculptures (and I didn't see them mentioned anywhere in the brochure--although my husband was holding it and I didn't look that carefully). Anyway, we entered (and left) the museum on the 81st Street side, so we were never even in the main rotunda. Now that I know where they are, I might have to stop back in. Luckily we live nearby.

David Burke was there signing his book and giving out samples of his Gourmet Pops. We didn't even think that there was anything overly exciting in the store at the end of the exhibit.

On a different note, we did really like the newly-refurbished Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. The place looks great!

[Steve Klc]

Yes, especially those big plasma screens above each little alcove. Very visually striking.

I think I tend to agree with Grimes and Cleo--the exhibit should have been more engaging and from a design perspective, well, lets just say the AMNH's own talented art and design people were not involved in preparing this exhibit--that was all the Field. The Museum's own page on the sculptures is here:

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/chocolate/.../sculptures.php

I also don't think the Shop made the best effort to source out very high quality chocolates, though I have heard the Shop is doing gangbuster business anyway. At least they were giving out samples. That next-to-last video station did the best job I've seen, though, of revealing just how labor-intensive and back-breaking the work is preparing the beans to be shipped.

What I've wondered about is the Cafe--can any of those RA-produced chocolate items really be any good?

Thank you for that link Aquitane, there's some good stuff there, especially the McKibben Ghana/fair trade piece.

[Fat Guy]

What I've wondered about is the Cafe--can any of those RA-produced chocolate items really be any good?

I tried about a dozen of them at the press preview. They were mostly workmanlike, but certainly not bad. On par with what you'd get at a well-regarded restaurant or gourmet shop in most any American city outside New York.

[fresco]

NYT has a piece canvassing all possible pros and cons of selling chocolate in a museum and the mixed message this sends to kids. Are we so fragile as a society that chocolate--chocolate!!!--ranks as one of the big things to fret about?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/30/arts/des...&partner=GOOGLE

[Fat Guy]

I'd say the pros are not adequately represented in the article. I'll just keep repeating that there is nothing about (insert name of food here) that is harmful if eaten in moderation, and that dividing food into "good" and "bad" is shallow and inaccurate. Moderation doesn't result from treating food as a narcotic and creating specific-food-free school zones, or in this case museum zones. What do these parents think? Do they think that if the chocolate shop is removed, the kids will forget that the exhibition is about chocolate? Do they think the kids won't be screaming for chocolate all the way home anyway? The same parents who can't say no or set reasonable limits in the chocolate shop are going to buy crap chocolate at the nearest candy store to the museum. At least the chocolate shop and cafe offer high-quality chocolate -- though not up to La Maison du Chocolat standards, for most visitors it will be the best they've ever had. This sort of experience, it can be hoped, may engender a little more respect for the product, a little more understanding of its history, a little more awareness of the level of craftsmanship involved -- surely that's a good thing. Of course the not-so-sub-text of the objection to the chocolate shop is an objection to museum shops in general. I can think of better things to worry about.

I just stopped by the rotunda to see the new crop of chocolate sculptures. They've been moved from the side to the back, and are as before a fascinating look at the artistic possibilities of the medium as well as the level of craftsmanship common to top pastry professionals. This set of sculptures, while not as impressive as the first, is still well worth checking out -- and there's no charge for walking into the rotunda and taking a look.

[alacarte]

I think it was appropriate to offer chocolate at the end of the exhibit. I took my 3-year-old niece to the exhibit. Long before the end, she was asking for chocolate anyway. I was jonesing for a piece myself. Then we went to see the dinosaurs.

If it had been an exhibit about different kinds of oatmeal, we would have gladly bellied up to an oatmeal bar for a sampler too.