The natural history of chocolate : being a distinct and particular account of the cocao-tree, its growth and culture, and the preparation, excellent properties, and medicinal vertues of its fruit / written in French by D. Quélus ; trans. by R. Brookes. 

Printed in London near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane : For J. Roberts, 1724. 

Lower Library: J.15.22¹ 

The natural history of chocolate provides an early perspective concerning the new tastes emerging from the colonisation of the Americas – specifically that of chocolate. In ninety-five pages, the author tackles the cultivation of the cocoa plant, the humoral properties of drinking-chocolate, and the more general medicinal and confectionary values of the product. The book’s analysis of the properties of chocolate against existing European physiological frameworks makes it particularly interesting regarding questions of acculturation. How did eighteenth-century Europeans assimilate the new tastes and ideas emerging from Empire into their pre-existing cultural and medicinal perceptions?

Quélus presents a thorough argument for chocolate’s ‘very temperate’ humoral quality, before providing insight into the more cultural side of the question: ‘The Spaniards taught by the Mexicans… try’d to make it [chocolate] more agreeable by the Addition of Sugar, some Oriental Spices, and Things that grew there…’.¹ Here, Quélus suggests how the Europeans adapted the bitter and unknown flavour of traditional American drinking chocolate to suit the tastes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europeans at home. From Quélus’s perspective, it was not only the ‘new’ and ‘foreign’ nature of chocolate that made it such a success among the elites of Europe, but also the product’s ability to correspond with established ideas and tastes.

Little is known of Quélus. From the book’s preface we learn of his fifteen years’ experience of the ‘American Islands’ while in service to the French Crown; the fact that he was an ‘eyewitness’ of the French colonies is espoused throughout.² More is known of the translator, Richard Brookes (fl. 1721–1763). A physician by trade, but polymath in interests, Brookes published and translated works of medicine, geography, natural history, and palaeontology.³ The preface to his A system of natural history notes Brookes’ experience abroad working in the Americas and Africa.⁴ In 1762, he established The general gazetteer, with new editions being produced into the late nineteenth century.⁵

This copy is part of the Davy Collection. Martin Davy, Master 1803–1839, pictured below, was a man of means. Following his widowerhood he purchased an estate at Heacham, Norfolk, wherein he installed a library. He died in office and the College was the sole beneficiary of his will. Davy’s books in Cambridge were sold but, as the College retained the estate, the collection of around 800 books comprising his private library was left in situ as recreational reading for Fellows, as the house at Heacham had become a vacation retreat. This situation endured for almost a century, until the property was requisitioned by the Army and its contents brought to Cambridge at the start of the War. Following a long period of uncertainty the Davy Collection was subsumed into the Library in 2024. Work is currently being carried out to fully incorporate the Collection into the Lower Library, and in August 2025, The natural history of chocolate became the first work of the Davy Collection to be catalogued.

Notes:

1. D. Quélus, The natural history of chocolate : being a distinct and particular account of the cocoa-tree, its growth and culture, and the preparation, excellent properties, and medicinal vertues of its fruit / trans. Richard Brookes (London : Printed for J. Roberts, 1724), p. 64.
2. Ibid., pp.iii-iv.
3. See Richard Brookes, The art of angling, rock and sea fishing, with the natural history of river, pond, and sea fish (London : Printed for J. Watts, 1740); Richard Brookes, The general practice of physic (London : Printed for J. Newbery, 1751); Richard Brookes, The natural history of waters, earths, stones, fossils, and minerals (London : Printed for J. Newbery, 1763).
4. See preface of Richard Brookes, A new and accurate system of natural history (London : Printed for J. Newbery, 1763).
5. See Richard Brookes, The general gazetteer (London : J.F.C. Rivington, 1786).