erica was a bitter drink,flavored with additives such as vanilla,earflower and chili,and was capped with a dark brown foam created by pouring the liquid from a height between containers. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first European to encounter chocolate when he observed it in the court of Moctezuma II in 1520.It proved to be an acquired taste, and it took until 1585 for the first official recording of a shipment of cocoa beans to Europe. Chocolate was believed to be an aphrodisiac and medicine,and spread across Europe in the 17th century,sweetened,served warm and flavored with familiar spices.[ It was initially primarily consumed by the elite,with expensive cocoa supplied by colonial plantations in the Americas. In the 18th century,it was considered southern European,aristocratic and Catholic,and was still produced in a similar way to the way it had been produced by the Aztecs. One of the first mass-produced chocolate bars,Fry's Chocolate Cream,was produced by Fry's in 1866. Starting in the 18th century,chocolate production was improved. In the 19th century,engine-powered milling was developedCoenraad Johannes van Houten received a patent for a process making Dutch cocoa. This removed cocoa butter from chocolate liquor (the product of milling),and permitted large scale production of chocolate. Other developments in the 19th century,including the melanger (a mixing machine),modern milk chocolate,the conching process to make chocolate smoother and change the flavor meant a worker in 1890 could produce fifty times more chocolate with the same labor than they could before the Industrial Revolution,and chocolate became a food to be eaten rather than drunk. As production moved from the Americas to Asia and Africa,mass markets in Western nations for chocolate opened up. In the early 20th century,British chocolate producers including Cadbury and Fry's faced controversy over the labor conditions in the Portuguese cacao industry in Africa. A 1908 report by a Cadbury agent described conditions as "de facto slavery." While conditions somewhat improved with a boycott by chocolate makers,slave labor among African cacao growers again gained public attention in the early 21st century. In the 20th century,chocolate production further developed,with development of the tempering technique to improve the snap and gloss of chocolate and the addition of lecithin to improve texture and consistency. White and couverture chocolate were developed in the 20th century and the bean-to-bar trade model be