Welcome to the Celtnet Spice Guide. As this site has grown and many more recipes have been added it's become evident that a guide to the various herbs available to the cook is necessary. With spices becoming more commonly available and more exotic spices becoming available from all over the world it has become evident that some kind of guide or introduction to spices is necessary. These pages are an attempt at bringing all the various culinary spices together into one place so that you can see what's available and perhaps find something new to use in your own cooking. To use this Spice Guide simply click on the first letter of the herb name above or below. Alternativey why not just browse through the guide. All the spices given here, whether common or rare, can be obtained via your local supermarket (or more often via your local Asian supermarket) or via a specialist spice distributor.

This is the description page for Cocoa Bean (Theobroma cacao) and includes a description as well as an image, if available and a selection of recipes from this site that relates to the herb: Cocoa Bean.

Cocoa beans are the fatty seed of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made. The seeds themselves are tightly packed into the cacao pod. The cacao Theobroma cacao is a small (about 6m tall) evergreen tree in the Sterculiaceae (Hibiscus [also known as Malvaceae]) family of plants, native to the deep tropical region of the Americas. Recent studies of Theobroma cacao genetics seem to show that the plant originated in the Amazon and was distributed by man throughout Central America and Mesoamerica. Its seeds are used to make cocoa and chocolate.

Even though we think of the cocoa bean today in terms of chocolate, the baked and hulled seeds (known as 'cocoa nibs') are used in cooking (both sweet and savoury) as a flavouring. Even though we think of chocolate as a sweet substance it is, technically, a spice. Being produced from a seed.

Chocolate itself represents a mix of cocoa solids and cocoa butter derived from the fruit of the cocoa tree, Theobroma cacao, a native of lowland, tropical South America. Archaelogical evidence suggests that it has been cultivated for three millennia in Central America and Mexico, with its earliest documented use around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesoamerican peoples made chocolate beverages, including the Maya and Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocolātl, a Nahuatl word meaning "bitter water". Chocolate itself is produced as a by-product of the fermentation of cocoa beans. Subsequently the beans are dried, cleaned, and roasted, and the shell is removed to produce cacao nibs. The nibs are then ground and liquified, resulting in pure chocolate in fluid form: chocolate liquor. The liquor can be further processed into two components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Chocolate is produced by the mixing of cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying portions. Chocolate is now the world's favourite snack and three quarters of the world's production comes from Tropical West Africa, with almost half this production originating from Côte d'Ivoire.

The recipes given here are all for using the cocoa bean directly. But you can find a whole range of chocolate recipes on my: Chocolate Recipes page.

Cocoa Bean Currined King Prawns
Cocoa Nib and Currant Rugleach
Cocoa Bean Tassie
Cocoa Nib and Raisin Biscuits
Cocoa Nib and Pecan Biscuits
Cocoa Nib Pudding
Cocoa Nib Panna Cotta
Cocoa Nib Cream
Chocolate Soufflés with Cocoa Nib Cream
Langoustines à la Provençale
Buckwheat and Cocoa Nib Cookies
Tonka Bean and Cocoa Nib Ice Cream