Frederick the Great discussion post 12

[cahn]

Every time I am amazed and enchanted that this is still going on! Truly DW is the Earthly Paradise!

All the good stuff continues to be archived at rheinsberg :)

Comments

Chocolate

[mildred_of_midgard]

I too am amazed!

I'll start discussion off with a tangential question about Heinrich raiding Fritz's larder: was chocolate manufactured yet in a form that would result in fingerprints? I'm only familiar with it as a beverage in Europe at this early date, which is not to say that it didn't exist.

Re: Chocolate

[selenak]

It wasn't yet sold as anything but a beverage, that wouldn't happen until 1828 or thereabouts, but the nobility had access to it in all forms as far as I know. When MT recommends chocolate to all her friends as ideal to lift the spirits and help with concentration, she's mostly thinking of the beverage, but Viennese cooks also used to pour it over some other pastry and use it as a cover. No idea whether Fritz knew it as anything but a beverage, I was just improvising. ;)

Re: Chocolate

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, right, the MT/Fritz meeting! I remember being surprised at the time, but knew the super anonymous author could be trusted to know her stuff. :)

Wikipedia is telling me that the 19th century is when a lot of the processes and technology that led to the improvement of chocolate were invented, but that experiments with pressing out cocoa butter began in France as early as 1760, around the time the first chocolate company was founded. Interesting!

Re: Chocolate

[mildred_of_midgard]

Should add for cahn that we know Fritz did like drinking chocolate; he wrote in 1760 that his dinner consisted of just a cup of chocolate. (Whether or not skipping the food part of dinner lasted very long, we know he lost substantial weight after the Seven Years' War started, and to my knowledge never regained it.) Regardless, what this definitely tells us is that he did drink chocolate on at least a somewhat regular basis! I also have an unsourced statement that dinner in his old age was fruit and a cup of chocolate.