i would like to try making a mesoamerican-style chocolate drink in as close to an authentic style as i can.
apparently, traditionally it was made mainly with cocoa beans, chili peppers, and corn meal. it is likely that the cacao beans/nibs would have been fermented and the corn nixtamalized, but i am not sure of this.
when i look around online, invariably it says the drink would be bitter, spicy, and quite unpalatable to modern tastes. the mesoamericans did not cultivate cane for sugar, i am told, and the only sweetener that would have been available would be honey. europeans who were introduced to chocolate thought it was disgusting, but some acquired a taste for it after a while.
is it true that mesoamerican chocolate drinks would have always traditionally have been bitter and unpleasant? agave and stevia are both new world plants, and while stevia is more localized to south america, agave at least would have been available in the general region of central america, and can be cooked down to a very sweet syrup. honey would also have been available. maple sugar and maple syrup are native to north america, but it is unlikely central americans would have had access to it, as maple trees do not generally grow that far south.
if this is the case- that chocolate could have been sweetened- might some chocolate have been a fermented alcoholic drink? traditionally the beans are fermented, and the pulp around them as well, in order to mellow and improve the taste. could the prepared drink itself have been fermented?
and what else could have been in chocolate?
vanilla is also a new world plant native to mexico, and was almost certainly used to some extent. one source i found claims that chocolate with vanilla was thought to be less healthy than plain chocolate, in europe once it was introduced there and sweetened with sugar.
ceylon and cassia cinnamon, now common in chocolate drinks, are native to asia and would not have been available in the americas at the time. there is a plant called canella, native to the caribbean, that is related but whether it would have been available, or used at all, is unknown to me. allspice would have been available, but i don't know if it would have gone in chocolate.
another additive that i have seen mentioned is the petals of the flowers of the flor de la oreja/orejuela tree. it supposedly lends a spicy flavor of its own and is still used in parts of central america to flavor coffee and other drinks.
annatto/achiote is known to have been used, mainly as a coloring additive.
what might an "ideal" modern chocolate drink using only ingredients available to central americans before the arrival of europeans consist of, using only things that would have been available to them at the time? i cannot find any definitive recipes or preparation techniques, only other people trying to approximate it the same way i am.
previous threads on this topic i have read through:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1djuwg/did_the_mayans_have_chocolate_in_500bc/
Most of the modern recipes for Aztec chocolate drink are simple, along the lines of: unsweetened cocoa powder or unsweetened baking chocolate, vanilla, boiling water, and chilli powder. Cool, and beat until frothy.
Roasted cocoa nibs are the ideal choice, rather than cocoa powder or unsweetened block chocolate. The cocoa pods are fermented in the process of making these.
I recommend a mild chilli powder, so you can have some flavour as well as chilli-heat. You might like to try a smoked chilli powder, like chipotle powder, and compare with unsmoked chilli.
Adding maize (in the form of masa harina) will thicken it. The common drink with masa harina is atole, and most atole recipes will be a good start. Modern atole is almost always sweetened; just leave all of that stuff out.
The "bitter and unpalatable" should be read in comparison to modern hot chocolate, milky and sweet. Just consider what somebody whose only experience of coffee is sweet café au lait would think of a shot of unsweetened espresso.
You could sweeten it with agave syrup and remain pre-Columbian, but we have no evidence that it was sweetened.
It should be thickish (but still drinkable, rather than needing a spoon). The water-only recipes usually use a lot of chocolate (e.g., 30g/1oz of cocoa nibs to 150ml of water). Using masa harina will give you a thick drink, with whatever amount of chocolate suits your tastes.
For ultra-traditional, take your chillies, and grind them on a metate. Add cocoa nibs, and grind. Add nixtamalised maize, and grind. Add vanilla if desired. You now have spicy chocolate masa. Mix with water, with quantities that qive you your desired consistency. The descriptions we have don't specify that it needs to be boiled; just mixed with water. Boiling it, or mixing it with boiling water, should give you a thicker result for the same amount of masa.
You should also be able to dry the masa, to make Aztec-style block chocolate.
Chilli powder and masa harina are convenient shortcuts, and will give you a close-enough result.