Food historian and author Sandra Oliver will offer a look at chocolate and its evolution in American cookery, at a Freeport Historical Society program on Sunday, Feb. 10, at 3 p.m., at the Old Town Hall on Park Street (on the grounds of the Hilton Garden Inn) in Freeport.

Oliver, who lives in Islesboro, will discuss how chocolate was gradually incorporated into American cookery. From chocolate’s start primarily as a beverage to the recent era of “chocolate decadence” and “death by chocolate,” Oliver will describe early chocolate creations.

Cakes, for example, were made chocolate by the use of chocolate filling or frosting in plain cake. Chocolate was to the batter later around the late 1800s and early 1900s, leading to the creation of the rich, dark devil’s food cake, the opposite of the popular white, fluffy angel cake.

Freeport candymaker Andy Wilbur from Wilbur’s of Maine will demonstrate how contemporary chocolates are made.

The audience will have the opportunity to taste a 19th-century chocolate drink, sample two cakes made from historic recipes, as well as sample contemporary chocolates from Wilbur’s of Maine.

The two historic cake recipes are posted on the Freeport Historical Society’s website at www.freeporthistoricalsociety.org.

Tickets are $10 per person. Reservations are recommended, as his event sold-out in 2012.

For more information, call 865-3170 or visit www.freeporthistoricalsociety.org.

Chocolate cakes were among the treats served as last year’s Freeport Historical Society program on chocolate. This year’s event, which features a talk by food historian Sandra Oliver, is on Feb. 10.