Is Modica Chocolate from Sicily Really Made from an Ancient Aztec Recipe?

While human consumption of chocolate dates to the Mayans, according to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets the first commercially produced chocolate bar was made by J.S. Fry & Sons of Bristol, England in 1847. Milk chocolate was invented in 1876 in Switzerland and not long after it was produced commercially as well. But another molded chocolate from Italy has gotten much less attention. Modica Chocolate was granted Italian Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status in 2018.

The PGI designation represents a governing regulation that protects agricultural and food products against misuse or imitation, guaranteeing the true origin of the product for customers. Known as Cioccolato di Modica PGI, or Chocolate of Modica, is the first and only PGI for chocolate. Modica chocolate comes from Modica, Sicily, and is similar to the standard chocolate bars we know and love, but it’s unique in that it is made from grinding cocoa and sugar together in a cold-working process. The cold processing of this chocolate allows the sugar crystals to remain whole instead of dissolving, giving Modica chocolate its signature texture and taste.

Matt Caputo photo credit Mitch Meyer

There’s a lot of false information about Modica chocolate according to Matt Caputo, CEO of Caputo’s and a craft chocolate expert. Standard stories about the origins of Modica’s style of chocolate claim the Aztecs created chocolate and the recipe for making hot chocolate, and when it migrated to Europe, a small town in Sicily used the traditional recipe from the Aztecs to inspire their own take on this chocolate.

“People say it’s like Aztec chocolate, that’s a misconception. When the Aztecs were making chocolate, they weren’t making chocolate bars, they were making beverages. They were coarsely stone grinding the cacao because it was being used for drinks, it didn’t need to be smooth. They also didn’t use sugar,” says Caputo.  In short, the Aztecs have nothing to do with Modica chocolate because they didn’t know one of the most important ingredients needed to make chocolate, sugar. The Aztecs merely used cocoa beans and added spices instead of sugar to give it a better taste.

Caputo explains that Modica’s real origin and style of chocolate production began when Spain first came into contact with cacao around the 16th century. At this time, Sicily was occupied by the Spanish for about 500 years, and Sicily is home to Modica, where the unique chocolate making method resides today. Cacao and chocolate use pretty much stayed with the Spanish empire during the 16th century, and the way they adapted this chocolate to their taste was through sugar. They would grind the cacao and then mix it with sugar. They didn’t need to melt the sugar because it was only being used as drinking chocolate at the time rather than in bar form, which wouldn’t become a thing until the 1800’s. As this tradition began to spread, chocolate consumption was adopted the quickest by what is now present day Italy, where the town of Modica in Sicily resides. According to Caputo, this is the only place this tradition really stayed alive in Europe. They put their own twist on it and instead of it being a pantry staple for drink making, they realized it was good on its own.

Mussklprozz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What is Modica Chocolate?

When the chocolate bar was created for eating rather than drinking, the tradition of using stone ground chocolate with coarse sugar really only stayed in Modica, and they are the only ones in Europe who keep that tradition to this day, says Caputo. What makes Modica chocolate super crunchy even when it’s fresh is because the sugar isn’t fully ground into the chocolate. Most chocolatiers that would grind their chocolate and mix it with sugar sold it in their shop, and they would sell it the next day or the next week, so blooming wasn’t a problem and because it tasted better fresh. As this new style of chocolate gained press and recognition, the industry took hold and wanted to sell it as a bar so chocolate lovers could enjoy it as well, and it started being packaged for export. This is when blooming became a problem because the chocolate wasn’t tempered, and as a consequence the chocolate would bloom during transport and become severely hard and brittle. “The chocolatiers didn’t know how to deal with this defective chocolate, and so people just thought oh, that’s how it’s supposed to be, but that’s not how it was traditionally,” says Caputo, “This is the history of Modica chocolate and where the misunderstanding comes from of what Modica chocolate is and how it should taste and look.”

Caputo goes on to explain that as time went on this problem was solved through the discovery of tempering chocolate. The chocolate would be tempered below 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent the sugar from melting. The low temperature thermal cycles allowed the cocoa butter molecules in the chocolate to stabilize and prevent blooming. The main thing this process does, called cold processing, is allowing the sugar crystals to stay whole and crunchy as opposed to emulsifying with the chocolate as it would be with a normal chocolatier. “This style of chocolate making is preserved only in Modica, Sicily, but to say it is only made there is an oversimplification, rather it’s the only place where it is still continuously used and by the far the epicenter of that style of production,” Caputo says.

According to the PGI regulations, the cocoa mass is dissolved in a bain-marie or in a tempering device, with a maximum of 50° Celsius at the center of the mass. Once dissolved, sugar is added, along with any optional ingredients. The product can be tempered before it is shaped, after which the mixture is put into in special molds. Once the chocolate has cooled, the product is extracted from the molds and packaged within a maximum of twelve hours.

Finding the Best Brands

Caputo explains that most of the time with the brands he’s found, all they’re doing is buying premade couverture, melting it, putting sugar in it, and remolding it. However, within the last ten to fifteen years there have been a lot more producers that have begun to buy whole beans and cold process it themselves.

“When looking at where to buy Modica style chocolate, there are a lot of brands that use really problematic sourcing with practices such as child slave labor, and I wasn’t getting the answers I wanted to hear when I asked questions about it. The company I like the best uses heirloom, organic farming cacao from Ecuador called Sabadi,” says Caputo, “in addition to good cacao they temper their chocolate so it tastes like it would in Modica, feels like it would in Modica, and any of the other ingredients they add are also Sicilian. Sabadi is the best example of Modica chocolate that uses ingredients that aren’t pillaging Mother Earth.”

Sabadi has various different Modica style chocolate bars available for purchase ranging in percentages and flavors, including ones with flower salt, white peppercorns, cinnamon, chili, and ginger. Sicily is known for its citrus fruits, so for the bars that have fruits such as orange, lemon, and mandarin, they don’t use any oils, just whole fruit. They are heirloom citrus, and when tempered it’s still going to taste and feel the way it would in a shop from Modica without any blooming when you get it in America four or five months later.