>>> [Aztec chocolate] often included hot peppers of one sort or another and
>>> was considered an aphrodisiac. The Aztecs reserved it for royalty.
>>> Moctezuma reportedly drank 50 cups of it a day.
> Gary and I made some to see what it would be like. We used bittersweet
> chocolate, poor quality countryside Mexican stuff he brought back, to
> more closely approximate what they would have had. It was gritty, but
> likely not as much so as the original. We whisked it into hot water,
> foaming it up, adding tiny snippets of chile de arbol. No sugar.
> It was awful *and* it burned. We didn't know exactly how much pepper
> to add. Extremely bitter, gritty, astringent and hot. The Aztecs had
> no concentrated sweeteners according to him.

Wouldn't the Aztecs have made it directly from cocoa pods? Where
would any grit come from that way?

I doubt the emperor of a country with a few million subjects needed
to put up with poor-quality anything. Particularly when there was
a steady demand for hundreds of human sacrifice victims every year.

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