Spices, flavoring, condiments, herbs to flavor cacao. Then we will have a series of publications on spices used by the Maya (and Aztec) to flavor cacao. It turns out that in the time before the arrival of the Spanish that cacao was primarily a vehicle for adding a diverse slew of tasty flowers and other plant chemicals to your body.
I drink dark chocolate every day so I can stay alert in the mid-afternoon (when I should be taking a siesta). But it is straight dark chocolate: I add only milk and brown sugar (real brown sugar, not white sugar colored with molasses).
But if I had been an Aztec priest or Maya lord, I would be adding a remarkable range of flowers, herbs, seeds, and other chemically active plant substances. The Aztec or Maya lord would probably select whether he wanted simply to get high, or have visions, or jump into the hammock with a dozen ladies-in-waiting.
Sophie and Michael Coe, and several other knowledgeable scholars, have written on the various flavorings for cacao. But almost never are the plants and flowers shown in detail.
When I was corresponding with Professor Coe a few years ago, he encouraged me to look deeper into the flavorings for cacao, so I have been working on this.
I now have an ample list of cacao flavorings (significantly longer than lists in most books on cacao of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica). Now our goal is to identify each plant and see where we can find each plant, flower, or spice in Guatemala. And go photograph it at high resolution.
We will start publishing our preliminary results as soon as funding is available.
