Cacáo without all the processing… superstraight, lean & mean
We have taken the liberty of reclassifying the cocoa bean to a cacáo nut.
Chocolate begins with cacáo seeds (oft-dubbed “Jungle M&Ms”) from zeppelin-shaped fruits referred to as “pods”. Botanists loosely categorize them an epigynous berry or pepo.
The fruit technically qualifies as an indehiscent fruit, defined as that which does not open at maturity but relies on predators (like man or monkey) to open it, or decay to release the seeds. That certainly describes cacáo.
A cacáo seed has the potential to germinate & propagate until the fermentation process kills that potential. Our standard nomenclature refers to the fermented cacáo seed as a “cocoa bean”, a poor term since a) “bean” is technically reserved for leguminous plants & b) the seeds of indehiscent fruits are commonly considered nuts rather than beans.
Cacáo ain’t pintos or garbanzos any more than chocolate is hummus.
The next linguistic challenge is that “cocoa nut” forms a homonym with “coconut”. This is a confusion we do not need.
To elevate cacáo to its proper place & extol the great efforts of growers / Bromans around the world, we’ll henceforth adopt the usage of “cacáo seeds” pre-fermentation & “cacáo nuts” post-fermentation.
For example, to use both terms in a sentence… “I love what you’ve done with the fermentation process giving us the best possible cacáo nuts from those lovely Arriba seeds!”
