200 YEARS OF CADBURY
It’s 200 years since John Cadbury’s early experiments with cocoa beans laid the foundation for his family’s empire. We chomp through some history – and search out today’s small-scale British chocolatiers hoping to make your Easter extra sweet
In March 1824, a small shop opened at 93 Bull Street, Birmingham, selling teas, spices, coffees and cocoa beans. It was one of the first in the city to boast plate-glass windows. Inside, its owner, John Cadbury, could be seen grinding cocoa beans using a pestle and mortar, experimenting with an early kind of drinking chocolate. He was unaware that his family would one day have much more to be proud of than swish windows; that those cocoa beans were the seeds of a globally renowned chocolate company.
This month marks 200 years since that modest store was founded. Cadbury is now the second-largest confectionery brand in the world (Mars takes the crown), famed for its purple-wrapped chocolate. Products include the nation’s favourite, Dairy Milk, and that staple of Easter treasure hunts, the Creme Egg, manufactured at a rate of more than one million per day. When chocolate shopping this Easter, you are certain to encounter the familiar curly ‘C’ that dominates the confectionery aisle.
John’s ambitions were never so lofty. As a Quaker and teetotaller, he saw his powdered drinking chocolate as a substitute for alcohol. ‘He thought offering people an alternative drink would make the world a better place,’ says Diane Wordsworth, author of A Histor y of Cadbur y (Pen & Sword History, £12.99). But it was bitter due to the overwhelming taste of cocoa butter in the beans. He had to experiment, mixing in flour and starch to make it palatable. The outcome proved popular. By 1842, the company was selling almost 30 different types of drinking chocolate, with various flavourings, such as chicory. It had moved around the corner to a larger warehouse, and by 1847 it relocated again to its first factory. But when John retired in 1861, the business was ailing – and it was up to his sons, George and Richard, to save it.
The brothers shifted the focus of the business from tea and coffee to chocolate. Hearing of a revolutionary method concocted by a Dutchman, George travelled to Holland where he bought a machine that could press that foul-tasting butter out of cocoa beans. This made the drink tasty without cheap additives. At the end of 1866 the company launched Cocoa Essence under the slogan ‘Absolutely Pure, Therefore Best’.
The press was a game-changer, and created the chocolate bar we know today. ‘It made chocolate softer as well as sweeter,’ says Diane, ‘so they were able to mould it into shapes.’ In 1875, Cadbury made its first Easter egg – dark
