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Updated: May 20, 2025
As a matter of fact, the active principles of all three are alkaloids, practically identical and equally effective. Each derives its value from its influence on the nervous system, which it stimulates, while checking the waste of tissue, but the cocoa-bean provides in addition solid food to replace wasted tissue.
One can but suppose that the long habit of drinking an infusion from coffee-beans and tea-leaves has fixed in the mind the erroneous idea that the substance of the cocoa-bean is also valueless.
During the process of "sweating" the cotyledons of the cocoa-bean, which are at first a purple colour and very compact in the skin, lose their brightness for a duller brown, and expand the skin, giving the bean a fuller shape. When dry, a properly cured bean should crush between the finger and thumb. Finally the beans are turned on to a tray to dry in the sun.
There remain three forms in which pure cocoa may be prepared as a beverage: 1. Cocoa-nibs. The natural broken segments of the roasted cocoa-bean, after the shell has been removed, prepared for table as an infusion by prolonged simmering. It is strange that this ridiculous and wasteful means is still in use at all, as next to none of the valuable portions of the nib are extracted.
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