Cortes, Hernan

Carmine is a colored pigment extracted from the female insect Coccus cacti or Dactylopius coccus, or its eggs. These insects live on prickly pear cactus in Mexico. The Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes brought the dye to Europe after seeing the Aztecs use it. 

Multidimensional Chromatography Techniques and Applications, edited by Hernan Cortes... 

Hernan Cortes, who had arrived in America in 1518, did not fail to recognize the commercial value of cochineal. Indeed, the dried insects became the first product exported from the New World to the Old, and Europeans couldn t get enough of that vibrant, beautiful scarlet color. France s famed Gobelin tapestries were tinted with cochineal. There was such demand for the dye that by the sixteenth century Spain was importing half a million pounds of cochineal annually. That s an impressive amount, especially considering that it takes seventy thousand hand-gathered insects to make a pound of the dye. Cochineal red became so popular that it drove kermes into obscurity, and cochineal is still used today. 

Chromatographic Analysis of Pharmaceuticals, edited by John A. Adamovics 50. Multidimensional Chromatography Techniques and Applications, edited by Hernan Cortes... 

Montezuma II (about 1466-1520) drank Xocolatl, [134] a chocolate drink made from cocoa, before he paid coiut to his wives, and Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725-1798) was convinced that chocolate possesses aphrodisiac properties. The Aztecs used vanilla to enhance the aroma of chocolate, centuries before in 1520 the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes (1485-1547) tasted it at the court of Montezuma (Fig. 3.31). 

Hernan Cortes was the first to bring cocoa and vanilla to Spain, and from there these aromatic substances spread right across Europe. 

The Fifth Letter of Hernan Cortes To the Emperor Charles V., containing an Account of his Expedition to Honduras in 1525-26. Translated from the Spanish by Don Pascual de Gayangos. (1868.) Isstted/ot 1 6S. 

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