Notes on chocolate: ‘I still use it to establish if my children are sick’

We are in a kitchen in southern Italy, and I am about to learn about the power of chocolate without ingesting a single square. It is perhaps my earliest memory. A slightly older relative, aged five, has been knocked over by boys mucking about on the dust road on a slow-moving moped. Her mother is frantic. The child is not outwardly harmed but… what if?

My grandmother, who has 10 children and is not a woman to call the doctor out on a whim – he costs – is calm. She lifts the child on to the windowsill and tells the little girl’s mother to offer her a piece of chocolate. ‘If she takes it, she’s fine, if not we call the doctor.’ The little girl takes it.

I still use this litmus test with my own children to establish severity of malaise; even on myself (sometimes on an hourly basis: health checks are important). The type of chocolate doesn’t really matter. It’s not so much in the eating as the taking that one establishes a modicum of wellbeing – although I don’t think the NHS would endorse my nonna’s test.

The cocoa content is important, however. Someone told me many years ago that a small piece of at least 70% cocoa content chocolate (anything lower than this just melts too quickly), left to melt on the tongue, can help abate a mild, tickly cough as the chocolate coats the back of the throat. For this I recommend Waitrose’s Intense, Rich Continental Dark Chocolate (the 200g bar, £2.50, has thicker pieces). It melts nice and slowly and just, well… tastes good. Incredibly, this has helped where tinctures and lozenges have failed.

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