Thomas Gage's Chocolate Recipe and Regimen of 1655

By R.A. Kashanipour In A New Survey of the West-Indies of 1655, the English friar Thomas Gage celebrated the ubiquitous consumption and qualities of chocolate throughout the early modern Spanish Atlantic World, particularly in New Spain. “Chocolate,” wrote the Dominican priest, was consumed in “all the West-India’s, but also in Spain, Italy, and Flanders, with approbation of many learned Doctors in Physick.” He lavishly described chocolate as “unctuous, warm [with] moist parts mingled with t..