Chocolate. Heavenly, heavenly chocolate. Its the go-to treat for most holidays, its smell can relax you and its taste can brighter your mood. In a concentrated amount it is full of antioxidants, and when heavily processed it just tastes really, really great (though not necessarily great for you). Who doesn’t love chocolate? Well, some people don’t, but the vast majority love its rich taste!
With Easter around the corner, and chocolate just being so good, I decided to look into the background of the delicious bean-product. Keep reading for some increasing information from origin to processing to types!
To start, the cocoa tree’s scientific name is Theobroma cocoa. Derived from Greek, theos means “god” and broma means “food.” The cocoa tree literally means food of the gods. Fitting, no? The cocoa tree mainly grows in Ghana, Indonesia, and the Ivory Coast, the world’s three largest cocoa producers. These trees produce pods, which contain cocoa beans. A single kilogram of chocolate can take from 300 to 600 cocoa beans, depending on the type of bean used. Three main beans are used: forastero, criollo, and trinitario. Foraserto beans are the main bean, used in 90% of the confectionery industry’s products. They create the classic chocolate flavour we all know and love. Criollo beans come mainly from Central and South America, lending a fruity flavour. This cocoa tree is rare, however, as its quite susceptible to disease. The final bean, the trinitario bean hails from Trinidad, and is a hybrid of the forastero and the criollo bean. This bean ranges in flavour immensely.
Once harvested, cocoa beans go through a multi-step process before it becomes the much beloved product. First the beans must undergo fermentation. Over 3 to 7 days, beans are sun-dried, the natural sugars and acids in the cocoa beans breaking down over time. They are then sorted, cleaned, and weighed before roasting. Roasting time and temperature depends on the desired final flavour of the chocolate. Roasting time ranges from 10 to 25 minutes, and temperature ranges from 240° to 270°F. The beans are then put through a machine which cracks the hard outer-shells of the beans and separates the chocolate nibs. The nibs are 47% cocoa solids and 53% cocoa butter. Cocoa solids and cocoa butter are the two main ingredients in chocolate, cocoa butter being the main source of fat. The final stage is conching, which is entirely up to the chocolate maker and their own recipes and additions cocoa components.
All this makes a couple different types of chocolate. Unsweetened chocolate is made of 100% cocoa solids and butter, and is exclusively used for baking. Trust me, you do not want to eat it straight. Dark chocolate contains a high percentage of cocoa solids with little to no milk, making it more bitter. Semisweet chocolate is the classic dark baking chocolate, with 40% to 62% cocoa solids. Bittersweet chocolate must contain at least 35% cocoa solids, though good quality bittersweet chocolate should contain between 60% to 85% cocoa solids. Milk chocolate normally contains from 10% to 20% cocoa solids and more than 12% milk products, negating the naturally bitter taste of cocoa. And finally, white chocolate is made from cocoa butter, sugar, milk, emulsifier, vanilla, and sometimes additional flavouring. As it’s made from cocoa butter, and does not contain any non-fat components of the cocoa bean, it has that characteristic off-white colour.
The earliest knowledge of the cocoa bean comes from the Mayans, from 250 to 900 A.D. The Mayans would ferment, roast, and grind the beans like us today, and consume it as a beverage with ground beans, water, chile, vanilla, black pepper, cornmeal, and sweetened with honey. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that chocolate as we know it came to be. The cocoa press was invented in 1828, making separating chocolate into butter and solids much easier. Between 1875 and 1894, companies like Nestle and Hershey’s came to be, developed the ever-popular milk chocolate, and began to mass produce products like chocolate bars. It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, that specialized chocolate companies became as popular as they are now.
That’s all for chocolate! But if you want more, check out our latest Student Kitchen article on How to Melt Chocolate!
– Emily Hotton
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