Frothy Chocolate 'dates Back to Mayans'

Scientists have discovered the first rule of hot chocolate - even in 600BC, it had to be served frothy.

Anthropologists from the University of Texas at Austin, and experts from the Hershey Foods Technical Centre in Pennsylvania, report in Nature this week that they took a close look at some crusty smears at the bottom of a collection of cooking pots with handles and spouts found at Colha in northern Belize.

These date from a pre-classical Mayan burial site at between 900BC and 250BC.

The researchers used sophisticated techniques to look at the chemistry of the scrapings from the pots, and identified theobromine and caffeine left behind by a brew of Theobroma cacao, or cocoa, more than 2,500 years ago. Similar studies have already identified 6,000-year-old wine from jars unearthed in Iran, and even identified evidence of lamb and sweet and sour lentils served with mead at a funeral feast in Turkey in 718 BC.

But the US team have gone one better: they believe the ancient pots were used to whip up froth through the spout.

Evidence from the Spanish conquistadores - and from classical Mayan sites - confirms that the Mayans and Aztecs liked their chocolate served with a lot of foam, pouring from one vessel into another to achieve the desirable cappucino effect. It was consumed with most meals and often mixed with something else - maize, honey, and even chilli - to make a variety of drinks.

The Colha discovery pushes back the use of chocolate as food by about 1,000 years.