The Secret Life of Chocolate -Marcos Patchett
Thu, 20 Mar
|London
A fascinating guide to the history and medical uses of cacao, peeling back the years of cultural cross-pollination and anatomizing the original, sacred Cacao-based beverages.


Time & Location
20 Mar 2025, 17:00 – 18:00
London, 19-21 Cecil Ct, London WC2N 4EZ, UK
About the event
The Secret Life of Chocolate is a book about chocolate.
Not the sweet, mass-produced fatty confection most of us are familiar with, though.
This book is about old-school chocolate; pre-Colombian, Central American, bitter-spicy-foamy-intense blow-your-socks-off chocolate; chocolate beverages made with toasted cocoa beans, water, and indigenous plants.
Today there are many different forms of drinking chocolate in Latin America, most of which reflect European (Spanish) influence, incorporating sugar, cinnamon, and milk.
The aim of this work is to peel back the years of cultural cross-pollination and anatomize the original Cacao-based beverages, which were richer, more complex, more potent, and darker (in every sense) than modern forms of chocolate.
Join us for an evening of delving into the ancient history of the human relationship with the cocoa tree, Theobroma cacao; it dissects the pharmacological properties of chocolate to the fullest possible extent; and it divulges the mythical and magical associations of human…