Five... moments from London's chocolate-drinking history
A drink for rakes and knaves
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
This edition’s a handful of moments from London’s chocolate-drinking history1 — a rollercoaster that saw the product’s popularity and prestige fluctuate dramatically. In 1675 Charles II issued a royal ban on chocolate houses, calling them ‘…hotbeds of sedition…’ Yet by the 1690s, Sir Christopher Wren was designing dedicated chocolate kitchens for Hampton Court Palace on royal commission, and noblemen were drinking elaborate, vanilla-infused chocolate brews as a way of demonstrating status.
London’s first chocolate houses
‘…In Bishopsgate Street in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West India drink called chocolate, to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time…’
— from the Publick Advertiser of 16th-22nd June 1657, via Pepys’s Diary
This was the first chocolate house recorded in the city, opened in 1657 near Bishopsgate. The real bloom of popularity that followed hot on its heels, though, was clustered around the aristocratic haunts of St. James’s — a result of chocolate’s association with wealth, empire and colonial exploitation of the West Indies.
One of the big-name chocolate-pushers of the time is actually still in existence today, although now as a member’s club: White's on St James's Street was established in 1693 as a chocolate house.
‘…In these steamy, smoky, wood-panelled rooms filled with the scent of perfume, noblemen ordered a drink that bore little resemblance to the sweet, milky powdered stuff served in today's coffee chains. The hot chocolate of the 17th century was an extravagant brew infused with citrus peel, jasmine, vanilla, musk and ambergris…’
— from A chocolate tour of London2 by Isabel Choat, the Guardian, from 2013
A Pepys-ian morning after
‘…Waked in the morning with my head in a sad taking through the last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for; so rose and went out with Mr. Creed to drink our morning draft, which he did give me in chocolate to settle my stomach…’
— by Samuel Pepys, from his diary from 4th April 1661