The Book of Chocolate

216 pp, Chocolate, the world's favorite confection, was unknown in Europe before the sixteenth century, when it was brought back from the Americas by the Spanish conquistadors. Originally consumed as a highly spiced drink and attributed with curative, even aphrodisiacal powers, by the eighteenth century chocolate, served steaming hot with milk and sugar in delicate porcelain cups, had become a favorite indulgence in elegant aristocratic homes and royal courts.