Chocolate Linguistics: You Say Cocoa, I Say Cacao

"Cacao" must be an absolute indulgence for linguists. The word originated with the Olmec civilization in what is now Mexico. It was then adopted by the Maya, transliterated by the Spanish, and appropriated by the speakers of almost every other modern European language. But where does "cacao" end and "cocoa" begin, and why does one word seem like an awkward rearranging of the other?

In one of the most accessible books on buying, eating, and baking with chocolate (David Lebovitz's The Great Book of Chocolate), I read that "[i]t is believed the name "cocoa" came about as the result of a misspelling by early English traders." Since David Lebovitz is also one of the most accessible cookbook authors, I emailed him to ask about his sources.

He got his information, he told me, for one of the smartest men in the chocolate business, Scharffen Berger co-founder Robert Steinberg. Steinberg, a contemplative traveler and incessant journal writer, sounds like my kind of guy. But he's semi-retired, traveling with his journal, and not all that accessible. Since I couldn't return to the source, I looked up several other chocolate experts from several different countries and asked them to define the words "cacao" and "cocoa."

(The glossary below is part of a joint post with my friend Leila Darabi of Everyday Trash about the specialized vocabularies of our blogs. Leila's a journalist, a spokesperson for a reproductive health think tank, and the smartest trash blogger out there).

In your own words, what's the difference between cocoa and cacao?



Martin Christy
British chocolate lecturer and editor of the encyclopedic resource Seventy Percent

Personally, I use these words in a more or less interchangeable way, often depending on the audience I'm addressing. Although 'cocoa' has taken on various meanings in the US and Britain, it's just an Anglicised version of 'cacao,' that probably came about through error.

If I'm making a presentation to newcomers to fine chocolate in the UK, I often stick to 'cocoa' as the word for the crop, which is more familiar to British ears, and also we know it here as an synonym for cocoa powder. If I have more time, or a more advanced group of tasters, I use 'cacao' for everything to do with Theobroma cacao - the plant, the beans and the fruit.

This is of course all confused by the use of 'cocoa' in the international trading of cacao, and even the industry's official world body goes with the English version - it's the International COCOA Organisation. (Then again ICCO comes with two 'C's, but that's another story.)

'Cacao' is the closest word we have to the original Nahuatl, Aztec word, which probably has a history going back a thousand years or more. I believe we should use this in all cases where we might have used 'cocoa', and reserve 'chocolate' for bars or drinks made with refined cacao, sugar, maybe vanilla and not too much else. This might sound strange to the ears of English speakers at first, but it's not so bad once you get used to it.

Mariangeles Soto-Diaz
Venezualan-born abstract painter whose current show is "The Divine Geometry of Chocolate"

The way I understand it (I'm neither an expert nor a writer) cacao is the word used to designate the species part in the name of the tree (Theobroma Cacao) originating in the Olmec civilization and passed on to the Mayan and later to the Spanish. The word also refers to the bean from which chocolate is made, and to the ancient form of currency. Cacao butter is the fat that comes from the nibs, and the cacao solids (cocoa) that are left in the process are critical in the making of fine chocolate. The confusion I've heard partly stems from the use of the term cocoa interchangeably with cacao to refer not to the cacao solids but to the defatted powder that you might use for a drink.

Cacao, then, often comes before cocoa—and not only in the dictionary. But once in a while they circulate together, in semantic confusion, thrown into an unconcerned chocolate mix. One thing is certain: both are equally indispensable in the process of making real chocolate and later forgotten by the discerning tongue.

[In Spanish,] we only use the term cacao, which avoids the cacao-cocoa confusion. And to refer to the drink, we simply call it chocolate caliente (hot chocolate).

Sam Madell
Socially-conscious chocolate maker at Tava in Australia

Cacao is, of course, the botanical name for the plant species in question, Theobroma cacao. I usually use the generic term "cocoa" instead, but I consider cocoa and cacao to be essentially interchangeable, EXCEPT when you're talking about the botanical species. In other words, the term "Theobroma COCOA" is incorrect. If I'm talking about "cocoa", I'd usually add a qualifier like cocoa tree, cocoa bean, cocoa powder ... whatever.

Jacques Torres
French chocolatier behind New York's Chocolate Haven and proponent of the word "cacao"

Cocoa means nothing to me.

Each one accurate, insightful, and different from the next, these definitions are a fascinating contrast to the (equally accurate and insightful) one I started with:

David Lebovitz
American pastry chef, author, and blogger living in Paris

Cacao refers to the pod (cacao pods), the beans within (cacao beans), and the pure paste of the bean (cacao paste or cacao "liquor").

Cocoa is the powder made from the cacao bean, which is mashed into a paste then pounded to extract the cocoa butter and pulverized into a dry powder.
--from The Great Book of Chocolate

(Photos: Jairus Cobb)