A chef in Europe just announced the world's FIRST non-dairy chocolate bar made with theobroma bicolor (a cacao cousin).
I unveiled mine 5 years ago.
I won't claim that I was the first because I suspect others got there years before me, including the women from the Mishky cooperative in Chazuta, Peru.
This may seem petty, but a lot of cacao and chocolate history has been rewritten by colonial powers. The cacao butter press and "dutching" claimed by Van Houten is one example.
A lot of us in the industry, seeing this image from 1763, immediately exclaim "WHAT? That's a press!"
Nothing else in a chocolate factory would look like that, it looks like other presses used in other industries... and the only plausible thing you'd do with that in a chocolate factory is press out fat.
Van Houten was born in 1801 and claimed this invention in 1828.
For the dutching invention, there are apparently reports of indigenous people in present-day Mexico using alkali - just as they did with corn.
Even more recent firsts which are much easier to fact check don't get reasonable scrutiny. "In 1986, Valrhona created the world's most bitter chocolate, instantly setting a new benchmark for the industry" only a French competitor beat them to this by several years.
Back then, 70% was considered outrageously bitter and this was pretty fringe.
Daniel Haran