Cacao
Thanks to the cacao plant from South America, we can enjoy delicious chocolate in many different ways.
The cacao tree provides the raw material for one of the world’s most delicious and well-known products, chocolate.
The cacao fruit contains 30-40 seeds, also known as cacao beans. The seeds are surrounded by a white, bittersweet flesh. Fresh cacao seeds are bitter and they must be fermented, dried and roasted before they achieve the right taste.
It was the local people of Mexico and Central America who were the first to use and appreciate cacao. The Aztecs even considered cacao as the food of the gods. Cacao was a drink for the elite. It was a bitter drink, prepared from the crushed cacao beans mixed with chili and vanilla.
The Spanish became acquainted with cacao in the 1520s and took it back to Europe. In Europe cacao was prepared according to a slightly sweeter recipe and quickly became popular.
Watch the video at the bottom of this page to see what the cacao fruit looks like inside. Here you can see the fruit's seeds, the cacao beans.
Fact box:
- Greenhouse location: Tropican house
- Danish name: Kakao
- Latin name: Theobroma cacao
- Family: Mallow family / Malvaceae
- Natural habitat: South America