Tobascocoa
I have come across the international flavor / taste barrier (different from but similar to the language barrier) a few times during my stay in Japan. It hits when you have people try foreign soft drinks - especially root beer, which I love. It happens when I suggest that people try eating Wendy’s Frosties with french fries in lieu of a spoon, or regular ice cream with pretzel sticks. It happened the other day as I was perusing the incredibly limited selection at the local convenience store. I found a small bottle of Tobasco® sauce. Taken with inspiration brought on by the slowly chilling weather, I picked it up and hollered across the room to the shopkeep. He’s my buddy. We were the only ones there. He didn’t mind. I said, “Do you know Tobasco® sauce’s secret use?” He said no. I told him. “If you put a few drops in your hot cocoa, you’d be surprised at how delicious it is.” He looked at me like I’d completely lost my marbles. His face showed that his brain couldn’t quite process the recipe and arrive at a likely conclusion. Unable to crunch the numbers, he determined that it must be unfathomably horrendous. If you reached the same conclusion, you’re very wrong.
I learned from Alton Brown of the show Good Eats (and Feasting on Asphalt) that Tobasco® plus Cocoa is a match made in heaven. The Aztecs, Mayas, and other Mesoamerican peoples were doing it ages ago - and they were big hot chocolate connoisseurs.
They sometimes flavoured chocolate with chilli, with vanilla, with Clerodendrum ligustrinum, Maya itsim-te, and with other ingredients less easy to identify. They probably liked to drink their chocolate hot, as the Maya did in Spanish colonial times.
- Chocolate in Early America
Yes indeed, cacao crazy, you might say. (That web page is worth a read if you’re curious, by the way.) Anyway, back to my friend the shopkeep, whose mouth was still agape in revulsion. I consoled him and attempted to explain the science behind it. HA. Like I have the Japanese skills to do that. I wound up likening the process to the way that salt has the ability to make something taste more like itself to some degree. What I couldn’t explain was that it electrochemically alters the receptivity of the tongue, or that supposedly the polyphenols in the chocolate play well with the capsaicin in the hot sauce while the casein in milk chocolate mellows out the heat of the peppers. I don’t feel all that bad about it, cause sheesh, that’s gotta be some 1-kyu level Japanese right there. Anyway, we had a nice chat after that. He exclaimed his surprise, I continued to extol the virtues of hot chocolate (see what I did there?), and finally I paid. He tried to get me to join Soka Gakkai again as I left. Sigh. Guess he felt the need to share something too. I’ll keep my tobascocoa, though, thanks. 
Deas’s Tobascocoa Preferences:
Take a slightly thickened cocoa (go a bit over the recommended amount), add a dash of instant coffee crystals (for a nice understated mocha flavor chord), a sprinkling of ground cinnamon (and / or nutmeg), and several liberal drops of hot sauce. Stir in lightly. Consume under a blanket or at a kotatsu. Repeat regularly.