Jug

VESSELS FOR CHOCOLATE
In New Spain and in the Caribbean, chocolate was the preferred elite beverage. An Italian traveler in the late eighteenth century noted that “all over the kingdom of Mexico it is the practice to drink chocolate twice a day.... The first [time] is early in the morning—many times they drink it in bed. The second time it is taken is around [4 p.m.].”

Before the conquest, chocolate, an American product then unknown to Europeans, was a foamy, bitter combination of cacao and water, mixed with achiote for color, chili peppers for spice, and wild honey for sweetness. The Spanish were the first to sweeten the drink with sugar.

Chocolate was accompanied by pieces of sweet bread and pastries for dipping and served in elaborate containers such as double-handled bernegales (see illustration), silver-mounted coconut shells, and jícaras (chocolate cups) with their corresponding mancerinas (saucers). The costly ingredients used to prepare chocolate were secured in special jars with iron or silver locks and kept under the watch of the lady of the house.

Chocolate, imported from Mexico, was very expensive in colonial British America. The wealth of Brooklyn’s Wyckoff family in the early 1800s is suggested by their purported use of a cider jug (on view here) as a chocolate pot.