Coenraad Johannes van Houten discovered cocoa powder.

Before Nestlé and Swiss Miss, there was Dutch chemist van Houten, who, in many ways, was the first modern chocolatier.

In the early 1800s, van Houten discovered that by removing most of the cocoa butter from unprocessed cocao, he could create a powdered chocolate substance. He patented his method in 1828 and further refined the powder by treating it with alkaline salts to increase its solubility — a process known as "Dutching." With that, the earliest form of hot chocolate mix was born.