October 29, 2010
Deborah Cadbury was raised on chocolate. As a child an enormous box of Cadbury chocolate would arrive on her doorstep every year, courtesy of a favorite uncle. It was one of the perks of being related to one of the world’s most famous chocolate dynasties.
Cadbury explores the roots of her family’s business and its February 2010 purchase by American food conglomerate Kraft Foods in her new book Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers.
The Magic Of Cocoa
The Cadbury business began in the early 19th century, when cocoa was very different from what today's consumers are used to. No one had yet figured out how to separate the cocoa butter from the rest of the cocoa bean so cocoa often came in the form of a bitter, oily beverage that was marketed as a health drink.
"Early products had lentils or pearl barley mixed in — all sorts of products to mop up the fat," Cadbury tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. "It was a little while before we realized the magic that there was to get out of the cocoa bean."
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