Reading Passage 1
Reading Passage 1
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1.
Chocolate for the masses
For almost three thousand years, chocolate was a drink of the elite and the wealthy, originally in
South America and later on in Europe. In the early 19th century, however, chocolate became far
more widely available, and consumption shot up dramatically across the populations of Europe in
particular.
It was 1828 that marked the beginning of the modern era in chocolate making and production.
Chocolate as a drink had been known for centuries, but in 1628 a Dutch chemist named Van Houten
developed a process for the manufacture of a new kind of powdered chocolate using a hydraulic
press. Untreated chocolate liquor’ — the end result of grinding the cacao beans from which
Chocolate is obtained — contains about 5-3 per cent cacao butter, but this machine removed nearly
half of this, leaving a cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder — what is now known as
‘cocoa’.
In 1547, the British Firm Fry and Sons found a way to mix a blend of cocoa powder and sugar
with melted cacao butter to produce a thin paste which could be cast into various shapes. This was
the world's first true solid chocolate. Thanks to immediate high Fernand for this product, the price
of cacao butter escalated, so the new solid chocolate was only accessible for the elite. But this
would eventually change, because of the introduction of cost-cutting methods and mass
production.
By the latter half of the 19th century, many manufacturers had begun making their own chocolate,
and using cocoa powder to hand-coat sugar confections. Cocoa powder also reached wide use in
many other products, like ice creams and biscuits. Entrepreneurial families like the Frys and
Cadburys in Britain had a social conscience in the midst of all this money-making, unlike many
other l9th-century captains of industry. In the Birmingham suburb of Bourneville, where they had
established their chocolate factor, the Cadburys created a model town with adequate housing for
their workers, and even dining and reading rooms so that their employees had no need to spend
anything on entertaining themselves.
However, the rising demand for chocolate also made it a target for unscrupulous producers and
merchants. Sometimes the expensive cacao butter was completely extracted and replaced with
olive or almond oil, or egg yolks. Alternatively, cheaper materials such as potato starch or flour
were added. In 1850, a health commission was created in Britain for the analysis of foods
suspicions about chocolate proved well-founded — most of the samples contained starch grains
from potatoes or other plants. The investigation inspired the British Food and Drug Act of 1860
and the Adulteration of Food Act of 1872.
The invention of milk chocolate took place in Switzerland, and was a collaboration between two
men. The first was Henri Nestle, a chemist who in l867 discovered a process to make powdered
milk by evaporation, when mixed with water, this could be fed to infants and small children. The
second man, Daniel Peter, came up with the idea of using Nestlé’s milk powder in the manufacture
of a new kind of chocolate, and, in 1879, the first milk chocolate bar was produced.
Also in 1879 another Swiss, Rodolphe Lindt, invented the conche machine, which vastly improved
the quality of Chocolate confectionery. Before Lindt, solid chocolate was usually coarse and gritty.
Now, however, it achieved such a degree of smoothness that Lindt named it ‘fondant’, after the
smooth sugar creams of that name. People on both sides of the Atlantic developed a taste for
fondant chocolate, and the use of the conche machine for solid chocolate became universal in the
business.
In the USA, Milton Hershey dominated the chocolate industry. In 1893, after seeing examples of
the machinery used in Europe in action at an international exhibition in Chicago, he bought some
and began turning out chocolate coatings for the caramels he was already producing. But after a
trip to the chocolate centers of Europe, he sold his caramel business for a million dollars, bought
a farm in Pennsylvania, and built a chocolate factory there.
This became the nucleus of ‘Hershey, the Chocolate Town’, which contained amongst other things
Hershey’s imposing mansion, the Hershey Department Store and the Hershey Bank. ’there was,
however, no elected mayor or indeed any democratic system in place. The whole town was in
essence Milton Hershey’s private kingdom, and he ran it as he wanted.
This was not the only Hershey town in existence. During a trip which he made to the island of
Cuba in 1915, Hershey was inspired to build a new model town centered round a mill for grinding
sugar. To transport the refined sugar so that it could be shipped by sea to his chocolate and cocoa
factory, Hershey built modern electric railroads too.
To help advertise his products, Hershey employed nutritionists to proclaim their health qualities,
and his chocolate bars and cocoa soon commanded the American market. Everything was
mechanized — a true assembly-line operation. Hershey’s best-set King bar contained almonds
imported from southern Europe dropped by machines into the waiting molds. Another popular
product was 'Hershey’s Kisses' — bite-sized, flat-bottomed drops of chocolate, individually
wrapped.
Nowadays so many tourists visit Hershey that the company no longer offers tours of its factory.
Rather, visitors are whisked along on automated carts through an exhibition called ‘Chocolate
World’, where they can see how their favorite products are produced.
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write:
1 Chocolate was consumed by greater numbers of people in the nineteenth century than in
previous times.
2 Fry's chocolate became more affordable because of the fall in price of one ingredient.
3 Entrepreneurial British chocolate manufacturers paid their employees well.
4 Customers were made ill through the practices of unscrupulous chocolate producers.
5 Fresh milk was used in the production of milk chocolate in Switzerland.
6 Lindt's conche machine was adopted by other manufacturers.
Questions 7-13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.