In 1631, the first recipe for a chocolate drink was published in Spain by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, an Andalusian physician, in his book, Curioso tratado de la naturaleza y calidad del chocolate.
Sir Hans Sloane was a major figure of 18th Century. He became a successful physician in London, with the Royal Family and other eminent persons as his patients. Hans Sloane was 27 when he traveled from England to Jamaica, in 1697, to serve as physician to the new governor.
On the island, Sloane encountered cacao, where the locals drank it mixed with water, though he is reported to have found it nauseating. An inventive type, Sloane set to work creating a more appetizing version of drinking chocolate. He eventually came up with a recipe for mixing chocolate with milk, which made the drink more palatable in his opinion.
When he returned to England, Sloane brought along his recipe for hot milk chocolate. Early on, London pharmacies manufactured and sold the beverage as a medicinal remedy.
By the 1750s, a Soho grocer named Nicholas Sanders claimed to be selling Sloane’s recipe as a medicinal elixir, perhaps making ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate’ the first brand-name milk chocolate.
Later, in the 19th century, the Cadbury Brothers commercialized the recipe under the name “Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate.” As hot milk chocolate’s popularity spread, so did Sloane’s fame as the inventor of modern hot chocolate.
Hot chocolate has become so popular in the United States that it is available in coffee vending machines.
Invention of hot chocolate in England
