Chocolate is delicious and has been around in some form or another for a very long time. But where does it actually come from? It’s not like it grows on trees… or does it?
In a manner of speaking one could say that chocolate does grow on trees since the fruit that is used to make chocolate comes from the Theobroma Cacao, also known as the cacao tree, but it’s a very simplified way of looking at it since the fruit needs to go through many stages before it becomes recognizable as chocolate.
The fruit of the tree is called a cacao pod and grows directly on the tree, and is shaped rather like an american football, each one weighing about half a kilo. When they are ripe they become a yellowish or orange colour and can be cut off the tree. Because they don’t all ripen at the same time, they are individually harvested and the unripe ones left on the tree to ripen further.
Inside these fruits are found the seeds of the tree which are the basis of chocolate.
To be made into chocolate they still have a while to go though, since the beans along with the pulp of the fruit needs to ferment first which takes about a week, before the seeds – also called cacao beans – can be removed and dried. After that the beans are roasted. The shell around the bean is sometimes removed before roasting and sometimes after, depending on the desired result. The reason for the roasting is to make the beans’ taste more palatable since they are quite bitter – and even after roasting most modern humans who are used to modern chocolates would likely find them too bitter. Then the beans are ground up which makes the chocolate liquid because of it’s very high fat content. Now the chocolate can be turned into one of three types: Dark chocolate, milk chocolate or white chocolate. What they all have in common is that some stabilising product will be added to make the chocolate harden into bars.
Dark chocolate is the least processed option. Here the liquid chocolate is simply mixed with sugar to take out some of the bitterness and then turned into a bar using one of a number of products.
To make milk chocolate or white chocolate the cocoa butter must first be separated out. This is done by pressing the liquid chocolate, which will then press out the cocoa butter and leave the remainder as solid. By adding sugar and milk to the cocoa butter, white chocolate is made. If some of the liquid chocolate is added back into the white chocolate mixture, it will be milk chocolate with the amount of liquid chocolate determining how light or dark the milk chocolate will be which allows for quite a range of flavour.
That’s not all that determines taste though since it also matters where the bean grew and how exactly it was roasted etc etc. In order to get a consistent product most chocolates are mixes that use chocolate sourced from several different places until the exact taste profile is achieved. Like in most other areas of food though, there are people who enjoy the unblended variety and enjoy exploring the differences in taste that come simply from where the bean grew and how it was treated after it was harvested.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/chocolate.htm