Chocolate Bar

For the majority of its history (from about 1500 BC when it was made as a drink by the Olmecs in Mesoamerica), chocolate was only used a beverage. In 1847, Arthur Fry, the great-grandson of the founder of Joseph Fry & Company (Bristol), discovered a way to mix some of the cocoa butter back into the 'Dutched' chocolate (cocoa powder). He added sugar, creating a paste that he moulded into the world's first chocolate bar. However, this first bar was rough and gritty, and it took another 32 years for Rodolphe Lindt to invent the conching machine (1879) to improve the texture of chocolate.