Love Chocolate? Thank a Sloane.
A friend gave me this poster on Valentine's Day. I asked her to make it into products for this site. She graciously agreed, and soon there will be an assortment of posters, mugs, shirts, cards and more for us and our chocolate-loving friends. The prototypes are here
and here
"It was (Hans Sloane's) visit to Jamaica that proved to be foundation of his wealth and success. During his time in Jamaican he had participated in a wreck-raising adventure in Jamaica and it was there that he met Elizabeth Langley, the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter Fulk Rose, whom he later married in 1695; both of which proved to be a useful source of funds. It was however by means of another oportunity that Hans really made his money.
Whilst he was in Jamaica Hans Sloane had observed that "Chocolate is here us'd by all Peoples, at all times". However the natives in the West Indies drank chocolate mixed with honey and pepper, a concoction quite unpalatable as far as Europeans were concerned; Hans himself recorded that he "found it in great quantities nauseous" whilst also noting that it "colours the Excrements of those feeding on it a dirty colour". Hans's great innovation was to find a way of making chocolate palatable for European tastes, which was simply to mix it with hot milk. Back in England he began the commercial production of 'Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate' which was marketed as a medicine noted 'For its Lightness on the Stomach and its great Use in all Consumptive Cases'.
Chocolate soon joined coffee as one of the fashionable drinks of the age and made Hans yet another fortune.
His basic recipe for milk chocolate survived long after his death. It was the same recipe used by John Cadbury when he began selling chocolate in 1824, and thus Cadbury's Dairy Milk is a direct descendant of Hans Sloane's original confection."
From Sir Hans Sloane
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