When the Spanish came upon the ‘New World’–new to them anyway–the processing of cocoa and chocolate was one of the things they learned from the native peoples. The Maya made chocolate where the cocoa was not heated, and thus sugars stayed crystalline and crunchy. The Spaniards brought the original recipe from the New World to Europe, but in later centuries attempts to smooth the texture led to heating and eventually the introduction of milk. These later European processes of heating the cocoa also changed the complex aromas and tastes of the cocoa. The Spanish had introduced the original process to many of its colonies, including Sicily, and while everywhere else they lost the original method, in the little southeastern Sicilian town of Modica they continue to this day making chocolate in the original Mayan cold process way. There’s a wonderful chocolate store in Lecce, Italy, that has these wonderful ‘Chocolate of Modica’ bars. I got a plain dark chocolate one, one with sea salt, and one with almonds. Oh boy.