Inspired by a tangent in the discussion in this thread about Cadbury’s chocolate:
I’ve long wondered how Switzerland came to be a byword for quality chocolate - I mean, the country is landlocked in almost exactly the centre of Western Europe, never had any colonial interests in Africa, South America, or anywhere else cocoa beans or sugar cane could be readily obtained and it just seems to be a rather unlikely place to become the Quality Chocolate Capital Of The World.
So, how did Switzerland become famous for its chocolate?
After Napoleon lost, the Swiss Army was forbidden from exporting young men any more, except to the vatican.
Needing new trade goods, they settled on cuckoo clocks and chocolate.
Is how I heard it. I imagine there’s some straighter dope than that.
“Because the great chocolate innovators were Swiss” They developed the processing technology - essentially developing bar chocolate, before that it was mostly a drink. And they may not grow chocolate, but they grow lots of cows, as terentii noted. An essential ingredient in milk chocolate, which they, if not invented (accounts vary), certainly perfected.
Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
When I was teaching in Berlin, a nice couple who were students of mine went on vacation to Switzerland. They bought a cuckoo clock (and it was a bit pricey) and had it shipped back to Berlin. Finally it arrived - they were quite proud of their Swiss souvenir - until they happened to look at the back of the clock and saw, “Made In Berlin” printed on it.
When I was working in Switzerland at the small private school, we would take the kids into town on Saturdays and, if we ever lost them, we knew to look at the local Burger King - they flocked there. I found out it was “illegal” for Burger King to sell “chocolate shakes” in Switzerland - they had strawberry, vanilla and “mocca” shakes. When I asked one of the Swiss at the school why, they told me about the stringent laws in Switzerland for anything using the word “chocolate” - it had to be made with very specific ingredients - and Burger King’s “chocolate” shakes came nowhere near their specifications/code for “real” chocolate, thus they were not allowed to call them chocolate - so they simply fiddled with the flavoring and came up with mocca - a more coffee/chocolate-like flavor instead.
Chocolate as we know it involved a lot of technical development steps, but the major breakthroughs were separating the cocoa butter, and then roasting and grinding (differnent) beans, and then recombining the two products. The British were the first to combine them into a solid chocolate bar (thus Cadbury). Then,