Chocolate.
For many people, it is the fifth food group - right up there with meat, dairy, grain, and fruits/vegetables. It is the elixir of the Gods. It is the perfect food. And it is essential to the celebration of Easter for many kids and even a few adults.
Chocolate or the cocoa bean is certainly an ancient food as the earliest evidence of consumption dates back 3,000 years ago to Mesoamerica. Indeed, the majority of the Mesoamerican people consumed chocolate-based beverages, including the Maya and Aztecs. The word "chocolate" derives from the Aztec word "xocolatl" for these drinks and translates as "bitter water."
The raw seeds of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made have an intense bitter taste. This taste is modified by fermenting the beans for a period of time during which the flavour molecules evolve resulting in our modern confectionary delight.
After fermentation, the beans are dried, cleaned and roasted. The nib is extracted and ground to give pure chocolate liquor from which cocoa solids and butter are extracted.
Darker chocolates have a high percentage of cocoa solids which are remixed with the cocoa butter to form the solid. Found in unsweetened baking chocolate, the concentration of cocoa solids results in the bitter taste.
Milder forms of chocolate can be generated by the addition of sugar and other forms of fat. The sweetness can be controlled by the percentage of sugar used. There really aren't any other ingredients in some forms of dark chocolate.
Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate to which milk powder has been added. Not whole milk as the water content would disrupt the fats and result in a blocky mess. Water is one ingredient which does not sit well with chocolate in its massive form.
White chocolate contains only cocoa butter, sugar and milk powder. The absence of the cocoa solids means it is free of many of the chemical compounds associated with chocolate such as caffeine, theobromine, and phenylethylamine. The cocoa solids are the source of flavonoids and alkaloids which both produce the bitter taste in chocolate and provide many of the healthy nutrients found in the food.
Both milk chocolate and white chocolate typically have vanilla added to help mellow the flavour. Only some types of dark chocolate utilize vanilla. All modern chocolates also employ some form of an emulsifying agent, such as soy lecithin, which helps to keep the fats and other components together.
Texture is everything in the manufacture of chocolate. Chocolate has to have a good mouthfeel, which is the term used to describe the way chocolate both melts in your mouth and coats the tongue. Expensive chocolates have a mouthfeel quite different from the 99 cent Easter Bunny variety.
One of the key factors involved is the melting point of chocolate. Typically, it is in the 30 C range which is lower than body temperature. As we all know, chocolate will melt in your hands if you hang onto it for too long.
But our mouths are typically a little cooler than our bodies, particularly if they are open. Melting chocolate in your mouth is a conscious act. It requires closing the mouth over a piece of chocolate and holding it for a short period of time. This slow melting coats the whole tongue and engages taste buds across every region. With more than 1,500 different flavour compounds identified in chocolate, the result is a complex mixture of all of our flavour sensations.
If that was all to the experience, any chocolate would do. But when chocolate is made it crystallizes into small abrasive crystals. Anything over about 50 microns results in a gritty taste. It makes the chocolate feel sandy. To prevent this sensation the chocolate needs to be smoothed out and the crystalline structure broken up.
This is achieved using a conche. It is essentially a giant rolling pin inside a tub filled with metal beads. The chocolate is kept in a liquid state by frictional heating but the result is smaller particles (typically less than 20 microns) that the tongue can no longer detect. High-quality chocolate is typically conched for a period of days, and the resulting smoothness adds to the mouthfeel.
The final stage of processing is tempering in which the final solidification and crystallization of the cocoa butter is carefully controlled resulting in a solid piece of chocolate with just the right sheen and rigidity.
Chocolate has also been shown to be good for your health. Aside from the flavonoids and polyphenols found in the cocoa solids which act as anti-oxidants, researchers have shown that people who are generally healthy and eat chocolate on a regular basis are less likely to gain weight. Even though chocolate is high in calories, the molecules in cocoa help control blood pressure and lower blood sugar levels.
Maybe chocolate is the ideal food.
