Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature by Erin Alice Cowling

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature by Erin Alice Cowling MaryAnne Vetterling Cowling, Erin Alice. Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature. U of Toronto P, 2021. Pp. 214. ISBN 978-1-4875-2720-4. Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature provides an excellent overview of the complex early history of chocolate and its significance within the context of Pre-Columbian culture and Early Modern Spanish literature. It is about chocolate in its earliest form, as a drink made from cacao beans. In addition to its six chapters with their respective [End Page 619] introduction and conclusion, the book contains endnotes, an index, a bibliography with useful links, plus two appendices and an epilogue about a recent Spanish play (Mestiza by Julieta Soria) in which cacao beans have a significant role. The typographical errors are few although in Appendix 2, p.171 the word toras should be otras as in the original document (available online). This affects the English translation which is penalty of Mosaic Law and should rather be “other punishments.” Professor Cowling begins her book with a chapter about the history of chocolate in Pre-Columbian times and cites evidence of the important role it played before the arrival of the Conquistadores. She notes the discovery of ceramic vessels containing cacao residue from 600 B.C. and recounts references to chocolate in various extant codices to establish the importance of cacao in Pre-Columbian cultures as a ceremonial and medicinal substance. Chapter two unfolds a selection of texts written by the earliest Spaniards to encounter the New World whose accounts of chocolate consist of reports on the various ways it was used. We find out that for many of the indigenous peoples, cacao beans were an important unit of currency exchange and were also used as gifts. In addition, there are accounts of how chocolate was processed and of its properties, both medicinal and harmful. Cowling details a possible reference to chocolate in Columbus’s writings and mentions Cortés’s sampling of the drink. She also includes selections from historical documents by Díaz del Castillo, Sahagún, Acosta, and others. In the next chapter we are introduced to a number of passages from seventeenth-century Spanish literature wherein chocolate as a drink appears mainly in comedias and entremeses by authors such as Calderón, Tirso de Molina, and Salas Barbadillo, thereby showing how chocolate evolved from a drink of the rich and the socially ambitious at the start of the seventeenth century to a common commodity by its end. Cowling also deals with the economic aspect of cacao in the Old-World market as a precious commodity. Chapter four focuses on the play Santa Rosa del Perú by the Spaniards Moreto and Lanini y Sagredo, written in honor of the beatification of Saint Rose of Lima. Cowling first examines the ecclesiastical debates about the permissibility of drinking chocolate while fasting. She then offers a detailed analysis of the play and comments on Rosa’s use of chocolate to cure her illnesses, both physical and spiritual, as well as her servant’s persistent hunger and desire for the beverage. This chapter is enhanced by two illustrations, a still life by Pereda containing the instruments typically used for preparing chocolate drinks in Spain and a photo of a sixteenth-century statue in Mexico City dedicated to the “Christ of the Cacao Bean.” The following chapter presents information about controversies in historical and medical documents concerning chocolate as either a medicine or a poison. Documents by Cortijo Herraiz, Valverde Turices, Colmenero de Ledesma, and others are quoted to illustrate medical opinions about chocolate and its consumption in Spain. A passage from a French travel diary (1677) about being served chocolate at the home of a Spanish princess is included in addition to a segment from Mata’s 1747 cookbook. Woven into the chapter are also various selections from literature, the most interesting being a “Décima” published in 1729 by Cortijo Herraiz about the virtues of chocolate. Excerpts from fictional writings by Marradón, Quiñones de Benavente, and Santos, among others, demonstrate, according to Cowling, a clear trajectory...