Chocolate

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Chocolate

• Foods, Facts Fallacies
• YSCN 0006

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What is Chocolate?

• A brown sweet solid?
• A brown sweet drink?
• A wide range of confectionary
• An important flavour ingredient for food

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Where does chocolate come from?

• Product of the Cacao tree Theobroma cacao
• Native of the American tropics
• Origin in the Amazon basin
• Widely planted to 20 from the equator

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Chocolate Names

• Mayan Xocoatl
• Aztec Cacahuatl
• Mexican Chocolatl
• God of chocolate, Quetzalcoatl

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The spread of Cacao

• 1517 Spaniards met chocolate
• 1600 First introduced to Italy
• 1615 Used in France
• 1650 Brought to England
• 1670 Grown in The Philippines
• 1800 Grown in West Africa

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The Cacao Tree

• Small tree 6 to 12m of the rain forest
  understorey
• Requires a lot of water
• Grows well in shade
• Dimorphic growth
• Cauliflorous flowers

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Fertilisation

• Trees produce a vast number of flowers
• only 1 in 500 matures to a ripe fruit
• no nectar or scent, pollen sticky
• stigma and anthers concealed
• both self incompatible and compatible varieties
• pollination by flying midges
• only in 2 hours after dawn

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• Criollo
• pods from green to red when ripe
• cotyledons white
• Forastero
• pods green to yellow
• cotyledons purple
• Trinitario
• Forastero x Criollo
• colours variable

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Cacao Fruit

• Take 5 months to develop
• 20-30 cm long with a thick husk
• contain 20 to 60 seeds
• seeds surrounded by a whitish acid/sweet pulp
• do not open or fall from tree when ripe
• seeds germinate rapidly, short viability

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From Cacao to Cocoa

• Husk removed from ripe pods
• Fermented for 4 to 7 days to remove mucilage
• Temperature rises to 45C
• Beans killed, pulp consumed by yeasts
• Brown colour of beans develops
• Loss of astringency, precursors of chocolate
  flavour produced

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Processing the Cocoa Beans

• Drying to 20 moisture
• Roasting, 120C,
• further loss of water and acid, full development
  of characteristic chocolate aroma
• De-shelling
• Grinding to nibs
• End of process until 1828!

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Consumption of ground Nibs

• Mayans Aztecs
• Cold frothy drink
• Chilli vanilla

• Europeans
• Hot drink with sugar
• Cinnamon, nutmeg
• 1700 milk added
• later added to cakes

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Cocoa Butter

• Cacao beans, 30 water, 30 fat,
• Nibs 55 fat
• (1828) Van Houten
• pressing, removes 80 of fat
• provides chocolate powder for good drinking
• treated alkali to increase solubility
• what to do with the fat, or Cocoa Butter?

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A very special fat

• Solid at room temperature
• Melts at 35C
• High content of stearate
• Very stable,
• high content of natural antioxidants
• tocopherols

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The first solid chocolate

• Mix of cocoa butter, mass sugar
• 1849 Frys chocolate bar
• Early products had very rough texture

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From Cocoa to Chocolate

• Grinding, Cocoa Mass
• Roller refining
• Conching, 60C, 5 days
• (1870) Lindt in Switzerland
• coating of particles with fat, controls viscosity
  
• Tempering, 50 - 27 - 32C (1830)
• control fat crystal sizes, critical to gloss
  brittleness of finished chocolate

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Hot Chocolate

• Molten chocolate is an emulsion of solid
  particles in a continuous phase of cocoa butter
• Particles mainly sugar cocoa solids
• Viscosity is very sensitive to the addition of
  the emulsifier lecithin
• Low viscosity desirable for moulding

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Milk Chocolate

• 1880 Peter Nestle in Switzerland
• added condensed milk
• Cadbury in UK
• added milk powder
• Hershey in US
• added fresh milk

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Types of Chocolate

• Definition, UK
• minimum 18 cocoa butter, 35 cocoa solids,
• White chocolate, no cocoa mass added
• Dark or plain chocolate
• Milk chocolate, minimum 14 milk solids
• Filled chocolates (moulded)
• Chocolate coated products (enrobed)

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Shaping

• Moulding, for traditional bars
• Shelling, for centred chocolates
• uses mould for liquid soft centres
• Enrobing, (1901) coated products
• centres pas on a continuous belt through a
  falling curtain of molten chocolate.
• Panning, for hard centres
• mixed chocolate in revolving drum

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Not Chocolate

• Substitution of vegetable oil for cocao butter
  (permitted up to 5)
• Adjust melting temp viscosity with stabilisers
  and emulsifiers
• Carob chocolate
• uses seed galactomannans, roasting gives brown
  colour.

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Where is it eaten?

• 1 Switzerland 10 kg pca
• plain with high cocoa solids content
• 2 United Kingdom 9 kg pca
• milk with less cocoa fat
• 8 United States 5 kg pca
• dark with smokey flavour