CHOCOLATE AS WE KNOW IT TODAY — creamy, sweet, smooth, and refined — is a relatively modern concoction. For most of its thousands of years, the seeds of the cacao tree were used by the Maya and Aztecs to make a spicy, oily drink they called xocoatl. Xocoatl was made by grinding roasted cacao beans together with chilis and cornmeal then mixing in water and whipping it up. Adding sugar to make sweet chocolate was an invention to come much later.