If Paris is the city of love, Brussels is the city of chocolate – & who’s to say that’s not even better? Today, visitors to the city are often tempted to stop en route between leaving their train at the Gare du Midi & arriving at their Brussels hotels to get a fix of their favourite confections from Neuhaus, Godiva, Leonidas or Guylian, but we need to look back to 1912 to understand why Belgium is synonymous with chocolate.Jean Neuhaus Junior had taken over the family business from his brother Frederic after his death the previous year. The shop, started in 1857, was originally an apothecary – their father, Jean Senior, had come to Brussels from Switzerland to set up his shop on the Galerie de la Reine. However, it was not long before liquorice, marshmallows & dark chocolate began to appear alongside the alongside the packets of cocaine tooth powder & cattarh snuff on offer.
But it was Jean Junior whose innovation put Belgian chocolate on the map. He was the first creator of what we know today as the classic Belgian chocolate, the reason why so many chocoholics flock to Brussels hotels: the soft or liquid filling encased in a crisp shell of couverture, which were originally called pralines. Their invention was soon followed by another innovation chez Neuhaus. Customers complained that their delicate pralines, sold in paper bags, were being crushed & broken before they reached home. It’s possible that they were stretching the truth a little, & that like so many chocolate-lovers today, they were simply unable to resist sampling their purchases, but in any event this led to Jean’s wife Louise developing a gift box, which she patented in 1915 as the “ballotin”. It was the prototype of what gives to much pleasure to so many of us today: the beautiful, virgin box of soft-centred Belgian chocolates.Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6911119
