Caumale and cacao
“ Cacao was the delicacy of warriors, of sacrifices, of kings; currency, medicine, sacred host, a link with the Beyond, the drink of the gods… ”
Abbot Michel Devert gave me the Caumale archives—I dove into reading about the Delisle-Duverger plantations, the oldest ones on Saint-Domingue. Within these archives are described all things cacao: their magical trees, and their multicolored pods, but…
« Cacao secretes tenderness and resentment: the pod scars, grates, flays, striates our dreams with indelible marks… »
« Take its chocolate, since dangerous company seems good to you… »
The Delisles brought back the pods and beans on every voyage, and drank their chocolate with spices.
« Like all great white Creoles, at 10:00, they took an “achicolade” (a chocolate break).”
It is the story of a whole life…
« My mother, on the day before my birth--April 25th 1780--craved hot chocolate, and ever since then I’ve liked it very much. »
Upon the death of her husband, Madame Delisle writes:
« Joseph-Bernard died in his Château de Caumale: a bronchus tore, and he was taken by a dark melancholy…
the cacao is just coming up there in Cuba, the snow falls here and it is cold… »
The discovery of a magnificent travel chocolate pot with a silver 18th-century “égoïste” (a chocolate pot for one) and its foamer of exotic wood set me rummaging through the cabinets of Caumale… and also collecting chocolate pots and cups… while posted all over the world…
I offer you beautiful royal blue and white Copenhagen pots from Denmark, colorful Meissen ones, copper ones from Spain, South American ones from Caracas and Colombia, beautiful French ones, a pair of very tall ones from a monastery, etc.
Silver, porcelain, gilt, copper; for lounges, for kitchens… chocolate, from the bean to the pot…
Geneviève FABRE
