In the post before last we looked at how chocolate was made in the 18th century and some of the ways it was used in the kitchen. Today I thought we can learn how the chocolate we know and love came to be. After all to paraphrase David Mitchell - A half-told story is a half-finished love affair.

Overall I think there are 5 important moments in our chocolate story that every self respecting chocolate lover should know about. Lets have a quick look at each of them.

Advertisement poster from late 19th century — Dutch skate cocoa. Erven Caspar Flick, Amsterdam, 1897, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1912-2469 (http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.390307)

The Cocoa powder

The first innovation came from the Netherlands where a dutch chemist by the name of Coenraad Johannes Van Houten wanted to make chocolate less oily and lighter to drink. In 1828 he parented a new manufacturing process where with the help of hydraulic screw press you were able squeeze out a good portion of the cacao butter (from 53% to around 27%). The resulting defatted “cake” could be then dried and pulverised into fine chocolate powder. Mr Van Houten also started to treat the cocoa powder with alkaline salts which transformed the pH levels of the cocoa powder from pH 5 (acidic) to around pH 7 - pH 8 (alkaline). This is important to know when using it in baking. Recipes that call for natural cocoa powder often use ingredients like baking soda to leaven the baked goods. The reaction however won’t work if alkaline cocoa powder is used. Today we know this as “dutched” cocoa powder. Contradictory of the belief, the darker the cocoa powder, the milder in flavour.

The Chocolate bar

The next leap forward came from the Fry family. The company J.S. Fry & Sons was founded in the second half of the 18th century. At the time you couldn’t mould chocolate, because it was very dry and brittle. However 1847 the company found a way to mix together sugar, cocoa powder and cocoa butter to create a chocolate that could be moulded. And the chocolate bar was born. To catch the eye of the masses, the new product they named it “Chocolat Délicieux à Manger“, which translates as “Delicious Chocolate to Eat“, and as we all know if it sounds fancy, it is fancy, right? At any rate the public loved it and in no time many other chocolate companies jumped on the cash train. This however turned the chocolate manufacturing world upside down. The cocoa butter, a by-produc from the Van Houten defattening process, became a highly valuable and sought after commodity. As a result the new bar was only in the reach for the rich. Price of the cocoa powder on the other hand dropped and a chocolate drink for the first time became available to the masses.

Milk chocolate

For those of you who enjoy milk chocolate you will have thank a Swiss chemist Henri Nestlé. Yes, that Nestlé. He created evaporated milk or milk powder. Soon after another his countryman and chocolatier Daniel Peter decided to use Nestlé milk powder and create a new kind of chocolate. Milk helps to dilute the strong chocolate flavour and creates a milder and mellower product. So 1879 the milk chocolate was born. I assume I don’t need to tell you how it went and if you are not sure, just take a walk to your favourite grocery store to the chocolate section.

Conching

Another name that we still recognise today is that of Rudolphe Lindt. He is the inventor of conching, a technique that helps chocolate achieve a very smooth consistency. Essentially the chocolate liquor is agitated and grinded in a machine with large rollers couple of days. Nowadays the conching has been shortened to half a day. The process was discovered in 1879 and helped to transform a chocolate from a little course and gritty ugly duckling into a smooth and creamy dream. This step also sometimes allows to skip the roasting of the beans, because the friction of the grinding already causes the heat to build up and “roast“ the beans in the process. There is also secondary benefit for conching. The build up heat together with the aeration causes a lot of the excess moisture and undesirable acids to evaporate, thus improving the flavour of chocolate by mellowing it

Tempering

Lastly we have come to tempering, a word that brings shivers to many home cooks. Cocoa butter consists of many different types of fat crystals that change depending on the treatment of chocolate. By heating, cooling, heating and cooling again the chocolate to certain temperatures you ensure that only stable crystals are formed. This ensures that the chocolate is shiny, with a good snap and doesn’t melt as quickly. On the other hand the benchtop afterwards look like a Jason Pollock painting and, if you messed up any of the steps, then your creations can look like a something only a mother can love. Ask me how I know.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find information when the practice of tempering first appeared. The earliest references I could find was from 1913 where the paper discuses chocolate tempering machines. It also implies that before that people did it by hand. Nowadays tempering is done immediately after conching.

And know I think I am in a mood for a chocolate cake and some experimental history…. Till next time.

L.

Sources

Books
Corriher, Shirley O., Bakewise. The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with over 200 Magnificent Recipes, Scribner, New York, 2008
McGee, Harold, On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Scribner, New York, 2004
Proceedings for Third International Congress of Refrigeration, Vol. III, English ed., Chicago, September 17 - 24, 1913

Title image
Chocolat Sprüngli, Zurich, 1890 (?), Bibliothèque Forney, AF 175380 PF (https://bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/pf0000819224/v0001.simple.selectedTab=record)