Reading Passage

Chocolate for the Masses

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading on pages 2 and 3.

For almost three thousand years, chocolate was a drink of the elite and the wealthy, originally in South
America and later on in Europe. In the early 19th century, however, chocolate became far more widely
available, and consumption shot up dramatically across the populations of Europe in particular.

It was 1828 that marked the beginning of the modern era in chocolate making and production. Chocolate as a
drink had been known for centuries, but in 1828 a Dutch chemist named Van Houten developed a process for
the manufacture of a new kind of powdered chocolate using a hydraulic press. Untreated chocolate liquor—the
end result of grinding the cacao beans from which chocolate is obtained—contains about 53 percent cacao
butter, but this machine removed nearly half of this, leaving a 'cake' that could be pulverized into a fine powder
—what is now known as cocoa.

In 1847, the British firm Fry and Sons found a way to mix a blend of cocoa powder and sugar with melted
cacao butter to produce a thin paste that could be cast into various shapes. This was the world's first true solid
chocolate. Thanks to immediate high demand for this product, the price of cacao butter escalated, so the new
solid chocolate was only accessible for the elite. But this would eventually change because of the introduction
of cost-cutting methods and mass production. By the latter half of the 19th century, many manufacturers had
begun making their own chocolate and using cocoa powder to hand-coat sugar confections. Cocoa powder also
reached wide use in many other products, like ice creams and biscuits.

Entrepreneurial families like the Frys and Cadburys in Britain had a social conscience in the midst of all this
money-making, unlike many other 19th-century captains of industry. In the Birmingham suburb of Bournville,
where they had established their chocolate factory, the Cadburys created a model town with adequate housing
for their workers, and even dining and reading rooms so that their employees had no need to spend anything on
entertaining themselves.

However, the rising demand for chocolate also made it a target for unscrupulous producers and merchants.
Sometimes the expensive cacao butter was completely extracted and replaced with olive or almond oil, or egg
yolks. Alternatively, cheaper materials such as potato starch or flour were added. In 1850, a health commission
was created in Britain for the analysis of foods. Suspicions about chocolate proved well-founded—most of the
samples contained starch grains from potatoes or other plants. The investigation inspired the British Food and
Drug Act of 1860 and the Adulteration of Food Act of 1872.

The invention of milk chocolate took place in Switzerland and was a collaboration between two men. The first
was Henri Nestlé, a chemist who in 1867 discovered a process to make powdered milk by evaporation; when
mixed with water, this could be fed to infants and small children. The second man, Daniel Peter, came up with
the idea of using Nestlé’s milk powder in the manufacture of a new kind of chocolate, and, in 1879, the first
milk chocolate bar was produced.

Also in 1879, another Swiss, Rodolphe Lindt, invented the conche machine, which vastly improved the quality
of chocolate confectionery. Before Lindt, solid chocolate was usually coarse and gritty. Now, however, it
achieved such a degree of smoothness that Lindt named it 'fondant', after the smooth sugar creams of that
name. People on both sides of the Atlantic developed a taste for fondant chocolate, and the use of the conche
machine for solid chocolate became universal in the business.
In the USA, Milton Hershey dominated the chocolate industry. In 1893, after seeing examples of the
machinery used in Europe in action at an international exhibition in Chicago, he bought some and began
turning out chocolate coatings for the caramels he was already producing. But after a trip to the chocolate
centers of Europe, he sold his caramel business for a million dollars, bought a farm in Pennsylvania, and built a
chocolate factory there.

This became the nucleus of 'Hershey, the Chocolate Town', which contained, amongst other things, Hershey's
imposing mansion, the Hershey Department Store, and the Hershey Bank. There was, however, no elected
mayor or indeed any democratic system in place. The whole town was, in essence, Milton Hershey's private
kingdom, and he ran it as he wanted.

This was not the only Hershey town in existence. During a trip he made to the island of Cuba in 1915, Hershey
was inspired to build a new model town centered around a mill for grinding sugar. To transport the refined
sugar so that it could be shipped by sea to his chocolate and cocoa factory, Hershey built modern electric
railroads too.

To help advertise his products, Hershey employed nutritionists to proclaim their health qualities, and his
chocolate bars and cocoa soon commanded the American market. Everything was mechanized—a true
assembly-line operation. Hershey’s best-selling bar contained almonds imported from Southern Europe,
dropped by machines into the waiting molds. Another popular product was "Hershey's Kisses"—bite-sized,
flat-bottomed drops of chocolate, individually wrapped.

Nowadays, so many tourists visit Hershey that the company no longer offers tours of its factory. Rather,
visitors are whisked along on automated carts through an exhibition called 'Chocolate World', where they can
see how their favorite products are produced.

Questions 1-6

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. Chocolate was consumed by greater numbers of people in the nineteenth century than in previous times.

2. Fry’s chocolate became more affordable because of the fall in price of one ingredient.

3. Entrepreneurial British chocolate manufacturers paid their employees well.

4. Customers were made ill through the practices of unscrupulous chocolate producers.

5. Fresh milk was used in the production of milk chocolate in Switzerland.

6. Lindt’s conche machine was adopted by other manufacturers.

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your
answer sheet.

Milton Hershey and the Chocolate Industry

7. Hershey bought some__________after visiting a trade fair.

8. After selling his caramel business, Hershey purchased a ________ .

9. The inhabitants of Hershey could not vote for a________ .

10. Hershey set up a new town in _________ around a mill.

11. Hershey constructed __________ to transport material.

12. Hershey brought in _________ to improve the image of his chocolate.

13. One popular chocolate product had _________ added to it.