1492 is a fateful date in the world history, also from the point of view of gastronomy history! In fact, with the discovery of the New World, Europeans began to have access to a whole series of new ingredients that changed food conception forever. Potatoes, tomatoes, corn, turkey and especially cocoa. The history of each of these ingredients is different and has had its own evolution: not all of these American ingredients, in fact, were immediately understood and received by European kitchens. Suffice it to say that the first printed recipe for a tomato sauce dates back to 1692 and it is contained in Antonio Latini’s ‘Lo Scalco alla Moderna’, a copy of which is on display upstairs. In 1692, when the tomato timidly appeared in dishes, chocolate was already a very widespread drink! The testimony of the first contact with this amazing powder, dates back to 1502, on the island of Guanaja, a municipality in Honduras, where Christopher Columbus, during his last voyage, came across an indigenous boat: these natives brought in trade goods, including cocoa beans. The real trade, however, begins with Cortez’s conquests. When he lands on the Tabasco coast in 1519 and tastes for the first time this drink made by the natives, Cortez understands that it can become a precious and easily marketable commodity. Legend has it that the first important person of the time to taste the chocolate was Pius V, who drank it as it was prepared by the Indians (unrefined seed, ground in cold water) and he found it so disgusting that certainly he did not give it a good publicity! During the seventeenth century, sugar was added to the drink and the seeds began to be processed in a different way and, at the end of the century, the chocolate became very similar to the one we still drink today! During the early years of the eighteenth century a huge religious problem linked to the consumption of chocolate arose: is it be possible on Fridays to eat chocolate without breaking the fast? Well, in Italy, numerous publications were printed, by the major theologians of the time who clashed on the subject with strokes of learned quotations, also from the Holy Scriptures. The problem was solved only in 1744 when Father Concina sanctioned that eating chocolate on a Friday is a sin (the original edition of Father Concina’s work is exhibited upstairs). This window display is dedicated to chocolate molds, because until the end of the eighteenthcentury chocolate was mainly consumed in liquid form, starting from the early nineteenth century the first solid chocolate compositions began to be produced using special molds. You can admire molds from all periods: from the oldest (n. 1 and 2) from the typical statue-shaped mold, up to the multiple molds of chocolates that we all know. From a purely artisanal format we then move on to industrial-type formats such as those you can see at n. 3, the classic chocolate coins, or at n ° 4 (pretzel) or to the classic Christmas logs (n. 5). With the passage of time, the material with which these molds are made also changes. The oldest are in tin, a very malleable material used to create statuary-style molds, while the industrial molds for chocolates are made of heavy metals such as iron, coated with tin or aluminum or, more recently, in stainless steel. Other interesting molds are at n. 6, an Italian mold from the fascist era of the colonial period, depicting a pineapple, or n. 7, a classic French mold of the belle epoque depicting a man on a velocipede. We then have a series of three molds at N. 8 that stand out from the others because they are made of a chemical compound: they are in fact made of Bakelite, and are among the first tests of industrial use of these types of new materials. These are actually the “grandparents” of modern silicone molds for home-made production or highend artisan-made pastry. Another peculiar and very rare series of molds is that at n. 9, made of brass and of Turkish origin.