The coffee you’re drinking? It’s not as cultured as the beverage we associate with chilly nights and childhood memories. Before it was a staple at football games and fall festivals, hot cocoa—as Americans know it—was a prized elixir, created 2,000 years ago by the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica. Their discovery of the cacao plant (Theobroma cacao, or “food of the gods”) preceded the coffee bean’s by about eight hundred years.

The Aztecs, who came into power after the Mayas, dubbed the cocoa mixture xocolatl after Xochiquetzal, their goddess of fertility. (No wonder those heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are so popular.) By the time the Spaniards took over Mesoamerica in the fifteenth century, cacao seeds were in such demand they were used as currency, and the beverage was introduced to European courts and countries, where it was served hot, and then eventually brought to the States.

There are myriad recipes for “drinking chocolate,” as the Europeans termed it. Unlike hot cocoa, which consists of only the powder of the cacao seed, hot chocolate refers to a solid bar of chocolate (cocoa powder and cocoa butter) that is melted to produce a thicker substance. Europeans often add vanilla, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and other spices to their melted chocolate; Mexicans add cinnamon and chili powder (like the Mayas and Aztecs); and Americans dress theirs with plump marshmallows.