Chocolate Day in Sweden Date in the current year: November 11, 2024

Chocolate is a sweet product made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that can be eaten by itself or added to other foods as a flavoring. Its history can be traced back to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations that used cocoa beans to make a bitter drink that was used in religious ceremonies.

Spanish conquistadors were introduced to chocolate by Native Americans and brought cocoa beans to Europe, where they were also used to make a beverage. Unlike its Mesoamerican prototype, European chocolate was sweetened and flavored with familiar spices, but it was still made in a similar way. The drink spread across the European continent in the 17th century, but it was very expensive and consumed primarily by the aristocracy.

The production of chocolate as we know it today was made possible by the Industrial Revolution. In the early 19th century, Dutch chocolate maker Casparus van Houten patented an inexpensive hydraulic press for cocoa beans that could be used to make cocoa powder, and his son Coenraad Johannes van Houten came up with the idea of treating cocoa liquor with alkali to make it less bitter and more water-soluble. The resulting “Dutch process chocolate” could be combined with sugar and cocoa butter to make chocolate bars.

This and other inventions eventually made chocolate available to the general public, and by the early 20th century eating chocolate was more popular than drinking chocolate. Since then, chocolate has become one of the world’s most popular foods and flavors. It is consumed all over the world and is used to make a wide range of foods, especially desserts such as cakes, cheesecakes, cookies, mousses, puddings, brownies, ice cream, etc.

The first Swedish chocolate factory producing chocolate bars and pralines was established in 1873. It was a subsidiary of the Danish confectionery company Cloetta, founded ten years earlier by Christoph Cloëtta and his two brothers. Today, Cloetta is a Swedish-owned company headquartered in Sundbyberg near Stockholm.

In 1888, another Danish confectioner, Emil Nissen, founded the Malmö Chocolate and Confectionery Factory (Malmö Choklad- och Konfektfabriks AB), later renamed Mazetti. In 1916, the Norwegian confectionery company Freia opened a chocolate factory in Sundyberg. As the brand name Freja was already taken in Sweden, the Swedish factory was named Marabou. Today, the Marabou brand is owned by Mondelez International and is one of the most popular chocolate brands in the Nordic countries.

The exact origin of Sweden’s Chocolate Day is unclear, but the holiday has been celebrated since at least 2011. Every year on November 11, Swedes jump at the opportunity to enjoy their favorite chocolates and chocolate desserts such as chocolate balls (chokladbollar) or chocolate mud cake (kladdkaka).