Question: How does chocolate get its taste?

James Hargreaves answered on 15 Jun 2011:

hey 08abarnes

Chocolate gets its flavour from the raw material used to make chocolate, which is called the Cocao bean. (say it like ” kak ou “)

If you take cacao beans, and wash the slimy stuff off called “pulp” and dry them, you stop the beans from fermenting (bugs eating the sugars) This means the beans cannot change their flavour. Before chocolate is made into the yummy stuff it tastes like “chilli powder”. (if i win, i can come to your school and show you all about this in person!! 🙂 ).

Sugar is then added to the mixture and goes through a process known as “conching” its here that a wide variety of not-very-well understood chemical and thermal changes occur in the beans that create chemicals that contribute to the flavors found in fermented beans.

It is these new chemical elements that are created that show up in the finished chocolate. The chocolate is then sweetened to the type of chocolate its to become wether its “dark or milk”. if milk chocolate is made milk and milk fats and even more sugar is added, before it goes through a process known as “tempering”. Tempering rearranges the sugar crystals in the chocolate to make sure it shines and tastes all scrummy and yummy.

After tempering, its put into moulds to set before you can eat it.

I’ve put some links here for you to look at:

This one is a link to the different types of chocolate available and how they are made:

http://candy.about.com/od/candybasics/a/chocguide.htm

and this one is about how to taste chocolate, and how to look out for its different flavours:

http://www.ameliechocolat.co.uk/pages.php?pageid=10

I hope i’ve answered your question alright, let me know by commenting if you havent understood or you want to know anything else 🙂