142 Fun Facts About Chocolate

Through which country did chocolate first reach Europe in the 16th century?

Spain was the first European country to take up chocolate, and its court at first drank the bitter brew as a medicine rather than a treat.

What is the chocolate-and-cream mixture used to fill truffles and glaze cakes called?

Ganache changes with its ratio: extra cream keeps it pourable for glazing, while extra chocolate sets it firm enough to roll into truffles.

What antioxidant compounds, abundant in dark chocolate, may contribute to cardiovascular health?

Cocoa flavanols do lower blood pressure in the short term, with a daily dose of 200 mg or more appearing to help vessel function, but evidence for lasting heart benefit stays thin.

Besides caffeine, which milder, longer-lasting stimulant is naturally present in chocolate?

Theobromine is far harder on pets than on people: dogs clear it so slowly that even a small bar of chocolate can poison a small dog.

What is the heating-and-cooling process that gives chocolate a glossy finish and firm snap called?

Tempering coaxes cocoa butter into Form V, the one crystal form that sets glossy and snaps cleanly; skip it and the bar turns out dull and crumbly.

Which chocolate brand made its bars square in 1932?

Ritter Sport began when co-founder Clara Ritter asked for a bar that would slip into the pocket of a sports jacket, which gave the square its shape and its name.

Which British firm, later merged with Cadbury, moulded what is often called the first chocolate bar for eating in 1847?

Fry's is credited with blending extra cocoa butter into chocolate liquor and sugar, a mouldable paste that became the base of most chocolate confectionery.

Which company first sold white chocolate commercially as a bar, called Galak or Milkybar, in 1936?

Nestlé launched it in 1936, yet for decades Europeans saw white chocolate as a children's sweet, and it caught on in the United States only in the 1980s.

The cacao tree's Greek-derived genus name translates to what?

Food of the Gods fits its past: Mesoamerican peoples held cacao to be a divine gift and buried dignitaries with bowls of chocolate for the afterlife.

After Eight's wafer-thin chocolates, launched in 1962, are filled with a fondant of which flavour?

Mint fondant goes in as a stiff paste, and an enzyme then slowly breaks down its sugar so the centre turns soft only after the chocolate has set.

Which continent grows more than two-thirds of the world's cocoa beans?

Africa grows roughly 70% of the crop, a striking shift for a tree that is native to the Amazon and reached the continent only in the 19th century.

Which British sugar-coated chocolates are thought to have inspired Forrest Mars to create M&M's?

Smarties are believed to have caught his eye in wartime Europe, where a hard sugar coat let chocolate travel in the heat without melting.

Which filling lies beneath the chocolate coating of a Bounty bar?

Coconut made Bounty a deliberate copy: Forrest Mars modelled it on America's Mounds bar and sold it in markets where that rival did not operate.

Which Swiss chocolatier is credited with inventing the conching machine in 1879?

Rodolphe Lindt is said to have found the method by accident, leaving a mixer running over a weekend and returning to chocolate that was smoother and glossier.

What are the broken pieces of roasted, hulled cacao beans called before they are ground into chocolate liquor?

Cacao nibs need no added liquid: grinding releases and melts their cocoa butter, turning the dry pieces into a free-flowing paste.

Who played the eccentric chocolatier in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory?

Gene Wilder took the part on one condition: that Wonka first appear limping on a cane and then somersault, so nobody would know when he was lying.

Milton Hershey built his chocolate factory and company town in which US state?

Pennsylvania: Hershey broke ground in 1903 in Derry Township near his birthplace, amid dairy farms that supplied fresh milk, and the company town of Hershey grew up around the plant.

The oldest known evidence of cacao use, about 5,300 years old, comes from a site in which South American country?

Ecuador's Santa Ana-La Florida site yielded the residues, which are well over a thousand years older than the earliest traces of cacao drinks in Mexico.

Which type of chocolate contains cocoa butter and sugar but no cocoa solids?

White chocolate keeps the cocoa butter but leaves out the dark cocoa solids, which is why it is ivory rather than brown and why purists say it is not chocolate at all.

Which Japanese snack of biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate is sold across much of Europe as Mikado?

Pocky's bare end was its makers' fix for sticky fingers, and the name copies the snap a stick makes when it breaks.

Which country was the world's largest producer of cocoa beans in 2023?

Côte d'Ivoire, also called Ivory Coast, overtook Ghana as the world's biggest cocoa grower in the late 1970s, and by 2024 it was growing more than a third of the global crop.

Nobles of which people brought the first recorded chocolate to a European royal court, in 1544?

Maya: Dominican friars brought a delegation of Qʼeqchiʼ Maya nobles to court in 1544, the earliest documented chocolate in Europe; no evidence ties Cortés to its arrival.

Besides eating them, what did ancient Mesoamerican civilizations commonly use cacao beans as?

Currency made of beans invited forgery: counterfeiters passed off fakes moulded from wax, amaranth dough or broken avocado pits.

Which French actress plays Vianne, the newcomer who opens a chocolate shop, in the 2000 film Chocolat?

Juliette Binoche's Vianne opens her shop just as Lent begins, tempting a village that is meant to be fasting; the film earned five Oscar nominations.

Cadbury's Bournville factory village lies on the edge of which English city?

Birmingham: the Cadbury brothers moved their works to open country south of the city in 1879 and built Bournville, a model village where the sale of alcohol was forbidden.

The Cadbury and Rowntree chocolate dynasties were both founded by families of which faith?

Quakers were teetotallers who saw cocoa as a wholesome alternative to alcohol, one reason they came to dominate British chocolate making.

In which sitcom's famous 1952 scene do two friends stuff chocolates into their mouths as a factory conveyor belt speeds up?

I Love Lucy sent Lucy and Ethel to the candy factory after the couples traded places, while their husbands made a huge mess of the kitchen at home.

Which nut is blended with cocoa in the Italian spread Nutella?

Hazelnuts make up about 13% of Nutella, a recipe descended from Piedmont's gianduja, a chocolate deliberately stretched with the region's nuts.

Cacao flowers are pollinated almost entirely by which tiny insects?

Midges of the genus Forcipomyia do the job that bees and butterflies do for most flowers, yet they miss so many blossoms that pollinating by hand raises a tree's yield.

Foil-wrapped chocolate coins called gelt are a tradition of which Jewish holiday?

Hanukkah gelt was real money until the 1920s, when the American candy firm Loft's began selling chocolate coins wrapped in gold and silver foil.

In Cadbury's 2007 advert, a gorilla drums along to which Phil Collins hit?

'In the Air Tonight' climbed back to number 14 in the UK chart on downloads alone after the advert aired, and Dairy Milk sales rose 9%.

Which Dutch cocoa maker lent its name to a recursive picture-within-a-picture effect?

Droste: the Haarlem cocoa maker's 1904 tin showed a nurse carrying a tray bearing the same tin, an image repeating into itself, a recursion now called the Droste effect.

Which emperor did a conquistador describe drinking frothed chocolate from golden cups at his banquets?

Montezuma II reportedly took no other drink with his meals, a detail from a soldier in Cortés's army that later grew into tales of dozens of cups a day.

Jean Neuhaus II created the first filled chocolate praline in 1912 in which city?

Brussels shoppers carried pralines home in paper cones that crushed them, so in 1915 the Neuhaus couple devised the ballotin box still used today.

Which organisation's 1927 guidebook printed an early recipe for s'mores, the toasted sandwich of marshmallow and chocolate?

Girl Scouts printed the recipe under the name 'Some More', and the contraction s'more only took over in the 1930s.

One legend credits the first chocolate brownie to the kitchen of which city's Palmer House hotel?

Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer is said to have asked the Palmer House pastry chef for a dessert that ladies at the 1893 World's Fair could eat from a boxed lunch.

Which early Mesoamerican civilization is popularly credited as the first to cultivate cacao?

Olmec farmers often get the credit, yet residue in pottery shows people on Mexico's Pacific coast drinking cacao by about 1900 BC, before the Olmec heartland rose.

The EU's 30-year 'chocolate war' was fought over British makers' use of which ingredient?

Vegetable fat in British, Irish and Danish bars led Italy to make them sell as 'chocolate substitute' until the EU's top court ruled against it in 2003.

The conche used to refine chocolate takes its name from the shape of what?

A shell: the first conches were troughs shaped like a conch, in which rollers kneaded the chocolate for hours or even days until it turned smooth.

In Aztec belief, cacao was the gift of which god?

Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, found cacao inside a mountain in one telling, and the Aztecs gave it back to their deities as a ritual offering.

Which American food giant bought Cadbury in a hard-fought 2010 takeover?

Kraft pledged during the bid to keep Cadbury's Somerdale factory open, then confirmed its closure within days of winning, to the fury of the workers.

Mexico's champurrado is hot chocolate thickened with dough made from which grain?

Corn dough, or masa, ties champurrado to far older cacao drinks: Mesoamericans were already stirring maize into cacao when Europeans first tasted chocolate.

What are the large, colourful fruits that grow straight from the trunk of the cacao tree called?

Cacao pods are cut from the trunk by hand with a machete, then split open to reach the seeds packed in sweet pulp inside.

Which step, done on the farm before cacao beans are dried, creates chocolate's flavour precursors?

Fermentation is where chocolate's flavour is born: for up to seven days, yeasts and bacteria digest the sweet pulp around the beans and create the precursors of the taste.

Barry Callebaut unveiled which product in 2017, billing it as the fourth type of chocolate?

Ruby chocolate is pink, had been in development since 2004, and industry experts still debate whether it is a genuine fourth type or a marketing claim.

What is chocolate with extra cocoa butter, made for coating and dipping, called?

Couverture, French for 'covering', must hold at least 31% cocoa butter under EU rules, and that extra fat gives a finished coating more sheen and a firmer snap.

Bicerin, a layered drink of espresso, hot chocolate and cream, comes from which city?

Turin: the bicerin, espresso, hot chocolate and cream layered in a small glass, has been served at Caffè Al Bicerin since the 1760s, in a city that had been a chocolate capital since the 1600s.

The brigadeiro, a fudgy ball of condensed milk and cocoa rolled in sprinkles, was created in which country?

Brazil's sweet is popularly said to have been named for Brigadier Eduardo Gomes by supporters of his 1945 run for president, a race he lost.

What is the whitish, dusty coating that appears on chocolate stored improperly or through temperature swings?

Chocolate bloom is perfectly safe to eat: the white film is either cocoa butter rising to the surface (fat bloom) or sugar crystals drawn out by moisture (sugar bloom).

The deep-fried Mars bar became a notorious chip-shop speciality of which country?

Scotland's claim centres on a Stonehaven chip shop, which Mars later asked to display a notice that the snack was not authorised or endorsed.

What does the cocoa percentage on a dark chocolate bar actually measure?

Cocoa solids plus cocoa butter count together, so two 70% bars can differ widely in how much is flavourful solids and how much is added fat.

Which traditional cacao variety has long been the most prized, though hardier types are far more widely grown?

Criollo was the bean Europeans first met in Mesoamerica; after disease struck, planters replaced much of it with hardier varieties brought from South America.

Treating cocoa with an alkali to cut its acidity and darken it is known as what?

Dutch processing: pioneered in the Netherlands in the early 19th century, the alkali wash raises cocoa's pH, leaving it darker, less bitter and less acidic than natural cocoa.

Which ingredient do the two paler kinds of chocolate contain that dark chocolate typically lacks?

Milk solids had to wait for a way to take the water out of milk: milk chocolate only succeeded in the 1870s, once a Swiss maker blended in milk with most of it removed.

In 17th-century Europe, chocolate was reputed to be which of these?

An aphrodisiac, the story went, and chocolate does contain amphetamine-like phenylethylamine, but the body breaks most of it down before it reaches the brain.

What is the step that separates the light, papery husks from broken roasted cacao beans called?

Winnowing: the skin loosens in roasting, the beans are cracked, and air currents blow the light husk fragments away, leaving the broken kernels that are ground into chocolate.

In which country are chocolate bilbies sold at Easter as a native alternative to the chocolate bunny?

Australia's Easter Bilby has been promoted by a campaign against feral rabbits, and sales of the chocolates help fund work to save the threatened marsupial.

Which emulsifier, often made from soy or sunflower, is added to chocolate to help it flow?

Lecithin thins molten chocolate, so a tiny dose can stand in for some of the costlier cocoa butter a maker would otherwise need.

A 2024 US study found 43% of dark chocolate and cocoa products tested exceeded California's Prop 65 limit for which metal?

Lead topped California's strict limit in 43% of the 72 products and cadmium in 35%, yet 70 of the 72 stayed within the FDA's own guidance for lead.

The cake left after the fat is pressed out of chocolate liquor is sold as which product?

Cocoa powder followed an 1828 patent by the Van Houten firm of Amsterdam, whose press squeezed the butter out of the liquor and left a cake to pulverise, paving the way for cheap chocolate.

In Japan, men return Valentine's chocolate gifts one month later, on March 14, a day known as what?

White Day was launched in 1978 by Japan's confectionery industry as an 'answer day', a year after one sweet-maker tried selling marshmallows to men on that date.

Which language is the usual source given for the word 'chocolate'?

Nahuatl, the Aztecs' language, gets the credit, but early Nahuatl texts call the drink cacahuatl, 'cacao water', so how the word 'chocolate' arose is still disputed.

A 1908 report by a Cadbury agent described labour on whose colonial cocoa plantations as 'de facto slavery'?

Portugal's plantations were investigated for Cadbury by Joseph Burtt, and in 1909 Britain's big chocolate makers boycotted their cocoa, which improved conditions.

The '-one' in Toblerone comes from torrone, the Italian word for what?

Nougat is the meaning of torrone, which Theodor Tobler joined to his own surname; his sons said the bar's peaks copied a pyramid of Folies Bergère dancers.

The bear long hidden in Toblerone's mountain logo is the symbol of which Swiss city?

Bern was Toblerone's only home until some production moved to Slovakia, after which rules on Swiss branding forced the Matterhorn off the pack.

KitKat was created in 1935 by Rowntree's, a confectioner based in which English city?

York: Rowntree's launched it there in 1935 as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp after a factory worker suggested 'a chocolate bar that a man could take to work in his pack up'; it became KitKat in 1937.

KitKats are popular good-luck gifts in Japan because the name echoes 'kitto katsu', meaning what?

Surely win: kitto katsu means 'you will surely win', so students are sent KitKats as good-luck charms before university exams, a custom the brand has leaned into.

The first jar of Nutella left Ferrero's factory in 1964 in which Italian town?

Alba was where Pietro Ferrero ran a bakery; his son Michele reworked the firm's Supercrema spread for sale across Europe and gave it its new name.

During World War II, M&M's were sold exclusively to whom?

The military: M&M's went on sale in 1941 and during the war were sold only to the US armed forces, who valued a sugar coating that kept the chocolate from melting in warm climates.

Ruth Wakefield, credited with the chocolate chip cookie, ran which inn in Whitman?

Toll House Inn was bought by Ruth and Kenneth Wakefield in 1930, and she later let a chocolate maker print her recipe on its wrappers, reportedly for a dollar.

Which US state made the chocolate chip cookie its official state cookie in 1997?

Massachusetts honoured the cookie in 1997, thirteen years after the inn in Whitman where it was invented had burned down.

Which candy bar, launched in 1930, did the Mars family name after one of their favourite horses?

Snickers was the Mars family's favourite horse, and their Tennessee stud, Milky Way Farm, went on to take the 1940 Kentucky Derby with Gallahadion.

Under what name was the Twix bar sold in much of mainland Europe until a 1991 rebrand?

Raider was retired in Germany with a rhyming slogan, roughly 'Raider is now called Twix, nothing else changes', and the old name has since returned on retro editions.

What is the paper strip sticking out of a Hershey's Kiss wrapper called?

Plume: the printed paper strip arrived in 1921, when machines took over from hand-wrapping, to set the Kiss apart from imitators selling similar sweets.

Before chocolate, Milton Hershey built his fortune on which confection?

Caramels made him rich: he sold the Lancaster Caramel Company for $1 million in 1900 but kept its chocolate sideline, convinced that chocolate had the bigger market.

Milton Hershey put down a deposit for a first-class stateroom on which doomed ship?

Titanic: Hershey wrote the White Star Line a $300 deposit check in December 1911, but business called him home early and he sailed on another liner instead.

Cadbury's signature purple was adopted as a tribute to which British monarch?

Queen Victoria is said to have favoured purple, and Cadbury guards the shade so closely that it has spent years in court with a rival over a trade mark on it.

The question 'How do you eat yours?' ran for years in adverts for which Cadbury product?

Creme Egg fans complained in droves in 2015 when Cadbury swapped the Dairy Milk casing for a standard cocoa mix, and UK sales fell by millions.

Legend places the invention of chocolate-laced mole sauce at a convent in which Mexican city?

Puebla: the tale has convent nuns scraping together nuts, chilies, spices, stale bread and a little chocolate for a visiting archbishop, giving mole poblano its name.

Black Forest gateau is soaked in Kirsch, a brandy distilled from which fruit?

Cherries go into kirsch whole, stones included, and the clear double-distilled brandy that results is dry rather than sweet like a cherry liqueur.

By one account, teenage Franz Sacher invented Sachertorte in 1832 for which statesman?

Prince Metternich's cake, in this story, came from a teenage apprentice in his kitchens, and Vienna's Hotel Sacher and Demel later fought over which of them sold the original.

In Japan, Valentine's giri-choko handed to co-workers translates roughly as what?

Obligation sweets are the cheap chocolates women hand to male colleagues; the custom is fading, and in 2018 Godiva ran a full-page advert urging workplaces to ban it.

Which chocolate egg is barred from the United States by a 1938 law against non-food objects embedded in sweets?

Kinder Surprise hides its toy inside the chocolate, which the 1938 law forbids; Kinder Joy, with the toy sealed in a separate half, is sold in the US legally.

Roald Dahl's chocolate-factory idea came from test packages Cadbury sent to which school?

Repton: as a pupil there in the early 1930s Dahl received Cadbury tasting boxes of new bars to rate, the seed of Wonka's factory; Cadbury and Rowntree's also planted spies in each other's works.

Which Golden Ticket winner is sucked up a pipe after falling into Wonka's chocolate river?

Augustus Gloop's plunge was less tasty on the 1971 film set, where one cast member recalled a river of water and food colouring that added cocoa failed to thicken.

Which dessert owes its name to a Baker's company employee rather than a country?

German chocolate cake is named for Samuel German, who created Baker's sweet baking chocolate; a 1957 Dallas newspaper recipe using it reportedly sent sales soaring.

Ghirardelli Square, landmark of the chocolate firm founded in 1852, is in which US city?

San Francisco drew Domingo Ghirardelli during the Gold Rush; after a few months in the gold fields he turned to selling supplies and sweets to miners instead.

Belgian-founded Godiva was sold in 2007 to Yıldız Holding, a company from which country?

Turkey: Yıldız Holding, the Istanbul-based owner of the Ülker biscuit brand, agreed to buy Godiva from Campbell Soup Company for $850 million in December 2007, ending more than three decades of American ownership.

In 2014 Lindt bought which US candy maker, its biggest purchase at the time?

Russell Stover, which also makes Whitman's chocolates, was Lindt's largest purchase to that point and lifted it to third place among North America's chocolate makers.

Hans Sloane, credited with adding milk to drinking chocolate, first tasted cacao on which island?

Jamaica is where Sloane reportedly found the local cocoa-and-water drink nauseating; he is credited with adding milk, though he more likely learned the practice from Jamaicans.

Gem traders once weighed stones against the seeds of which chocolate-substitute tree?

Carob seeds gave the carat its name, by way of Arabic and Greek, because traders believed they were uniform in weight; in fact they vary about as much as other seeds.

Forrest Mars founded Mars Limited in 1932 in which English town?

Slough: Forrest Mars set up there in 1932 after a falling-out with his father Frank, who had handed him the foreign rights to the Milky Way; the British version became the Mars bar.

Mars famously refused to let M&M's lure the alien in which Steven Spielberg film?

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial used Reese's Pieces instead, because Mars feared the creature would frighten children. Sales of the rival sweet jumped after the film opened.

Which chocolate bar, launched by Frank Mars in 1923, was named after a popular malted drink of the day?

Milky Way borrowed both its name and its flavour from the malted milk drinks popular at the time, not from the stars overhead. It was the first chocolate bar Frank Mars made.

Which actor took the 1971 role of Willy Wonka only if he could enter limping, then somersault?

Gene Wilder kept the stunt a secret from the crowd at the factory gates, so the surprise on their faces when he tumbles forward is real.

In Harry Potter, chocolate is the recommended remedy after an encounter with which creatures?

Dementors drain hope and happiness from everyone nearby. J.K. Rowling wrote that chocolate lifts the mood again, though only as a short-term fix.

The deep-fried Mars bar, battered and sold as a chip-shop novelty, originated in which country?

Scotland's Carron Fish Bar, which bills itself as the dish's birthplace, estimated in 2012 that 70% of the chocolate bars it fried went to visitors who had heard of its reputation.

In which 1950s sitcom do two friends struggle to wrap chocolates on a speeding conveyor belt?

I Love Lucy sent Lucy and Ethel to work in a candy factory. A 2013 Paley Center special ranked the scene first among the funniest moments in TV history.

Which campfire treat of chocolate, marshmallow and graham crackers did Girl Scouts popularise?

S'mores began as 'Some Mores', the name a 1925 newspaper used for the Girl Scouts' snack. The shortened form took over by the 1930s.

Chocolate coins called gelt are traditionally given to children during which Jewish festival?

Hanukkah gifts were once real money. An American candy firm, Loft's, made the first chocolate gelt in the 1920s and sold it in mesh pouches that looked like money bags.

Which colour of M&M's was withdrawn in 1976 over a food-dye scare and only returned in 1987?

Red M&M's never contained the suspect dye, but shoppers were wary of any food coloured that way. Orange was added to the mix to replace it.

Chocolate truffles are named for their resemblance to a prized edible type of what?

Fungus is the model: hand-rolled and dusted, the sweets look like the knobbly truffles that grow underground and are dug up as a delicacy.

3 Musketeers once packed chocolate and vanilla pieces with which third flavour, dropped in wartime?

Strawberry and vanilla were phased out as costs rose and sugar was restricted during the war, leaving only the chocolate piece that is still sold today.

Which Italian dessert layers coffee-soaked ladyfingers and mascarpone under a dusting of cocoa?

Tiramisu takes its name from the Italian for 'pick me up' or 'cheer me up'. By one well-known account it was invented at a restaurant in Treviso as recently as 1969.

Which French dessert is a rolled sponge, usually iced in chocolate to resemble a log?

Bûche de Noël was first the name of the real log burned on the hearth each winter. The cake inherited it once that custom had faded from use.

The Chocolate Hills, over a thousand grassy domes that turn brown each dry season, are in which country?

The Philippines protects the hills, on the island of Bohol, as a National Geological Monument, a status they were given in 1988.

Which rich chocolate layer cake's name is thought to play on a pale, airy sponge cake of the 1800s?

Devil's food is thought to answer angel food cake, the pale sponge in fashion when its first recipes appeared in the late 19th century. A 1902 version cheekily declared itself fit for angels.

Which actor played the young chocolatier in Wonka, the 2023 musical prequel to Roald Dahl's story?

Timothée Chalamet earned a Golden Globe nomination for the part. Hugh Grant appeared beside him as an Oompa-Loompa, created through motion capture.

Which American chocolate bar did Bart Simpson promote in television adverts from 1988 until 2001?

Butterfinger signed the Simpsons while they were still a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, and the cartoon's instant success boosted the bar's popularity.

A British 99 ice cream cone is topped with which Cadbury chocolate bar?

Flake was discovered by chance in 1920, when a Cadbury worker noticed thin streams of excess chocolate cooling into rippled folds as they fell from the moulds.

Which coconut-filled Mars chocolate bar, launched in 1951, is usually sold as two small pieces?

Bounty adverts have long shown sandy beaches and coconut palms. One writer read its 1951 launch as an answer to a postwar longing for sunny foreign travel.

Which gentle kitchen setup, a bowl set over simmering water, is the classic way to melt chocolate?

A bain-marie heats its contents evenly and never above the temperature of the water beneath, so the chocolate melts without splitting or caking onto the pan.

Brigadeiros, fudgy chocolate balls rolled in sprinkles, are a party sweet from which country?

Brazil got the sweet from an election: it was made to promote Brigadier Eduardo Gomes, a presidential candidate in 1945. He lost, but the treat named after his rank stuck.

Which chocolate-iced choux pastry has a French name meaning flash of lightning?

Éclair may owe its name to being eaten in a flash. Another explanation is that the glistening icing on top reminded people of lightning.

Which ice cream maker is said to have created chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in 1984?

Ben & Jerry's took the idea from an anonymous note on the flavour suggestion board at its first scoop shop in Burlington. Pints of it went on sale in 1991.

The Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree chocolate dynasties of England all belonged to which religious group?

Quakers ran all three of Britain's big confectionery makers, and their beliefs showed: the model village the Cadburys built for their workers had no pubs.

Vienna's Sachertorte hides a thin layer of which fruit jam beneath its glossy chocolate glaze?

Apricot jam is agreed on, but little else was: Hotel Sacher and the Demel pastry shop fought for years over the cake, the hotel baking two sponge layers and Demel one.

In 1942, Hershey's Kisses production briefly stopped because which wrapping material was rationed?

Aluminum foil was rationed for the war effort, so the idle Kisses machines were switched to making emergency chocolate ration bars for soldiers.

Curtiss Candy claimed its Baby Ruth bar honoured the daughter of which US president?

Grover Cleveland's daughter Ruth had died 17 years before the chocolate bar was named in 1921, just as the fame of the baseball star Babe Ruth was on the rise.

Which chocolate brand, launched by Suchard in 1901, uses a lilac-coloured Alpine cow as its mascot?

Milka's cow is named Lila, after her colour, and has fronted the brand's advertising campaigns ever since 1972.

A 1991 tribunal ruled which chocolate-topped McVitie's snack exempt from VAT on chocolate biscuits?

Jaffa Cakes won after McVitie's argued that cakes harden as they go stale while biscuits go soft. The firm even baked a 12-inch version to show that size was irrelevant.

Which American chocolate-coated coconut bar is the almond-free sibling of Almond Joy?

Mounds was named for its shape, a mound of coconut. By 1935 the company that made it had become the largest consumer of coconut in the world.

Mars sells its Dove chocolate under which different brand name in the United Kingdom and Ireland?

Galaxy has been made in the United Kingdom since 1960. The Dove name came from a Chicago sweet shop whose ice cream bar business Mars bought in 1986.

Which tin of assorted British chocolates and toffees takes its name from a J. M. Barrie play?

Quality Street tins long showed Miss Sweetly and Major Quality, a couple in Regency dress modelled on the principal characters of the play.

Mozartkugeln, chocolate-coated balls of pistachio marzipan, were created in 1890 in which city?

Salzburg confectioner Paul Fürst never patented his sweet, so rival shops soon copied it. His descendants still make the original by hand.

Caffè mocha, a blend of espresso and chocolate, is named after a historic port in which country?

Yemen's port of Mokha was famous for its coffee trade from the 15th to the 17th century. 'Mocha' only came to mean coffee paired with chocolate around 1900.

In 1912 Jean Neuhaus II created the filled chocolate praline in which European capital?

Brussels also gave chocolates their gift box: Jean's wife, Louise, saw the pralines getting crushed in paper cone bags and helped design the ballotin in 1915.

One legend credits the first chocolate brownie to the Palmer House Hotel in which US city, in 1893?

Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer is said to have asked the hotel's pastry chef for a dessert that ladies could eat at the World's Columbian Exposition.

Which sandwich of two soft chocolate cake rounds became Maine's official state treat in 2011?

The whoopie pie is Maine's state treat but not its state dessert, which is blueberry pie. Four other states also claim to be its birthplace.

Buckeyes, peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate to resemble a tree nut, belong to which US state?

Ohio's state tree is the buckeye, whose real nut is poisonous. The candy is only partly dipped, leaving a circle of peanut butter showing so that it looks like one.

Milo, a chocolate malt drink named after an ancient Greek athlete, was developed in which country?

Australia's Thomas Mayne, a chemist working at Nestlé, launched Milo at the Sydney Royal Easter Show as a balanced nutritional drink.

Arnott's named which chocolate biscuit after the winner of the 1958 Kentucky Derby?

Tim Tam was the winner Ross Arnott watched at the race that day. He decided the name was perfect for a planned new biscuit, which reached the shops in 1964.

Henri Nestlé, whose name now sits on countless chocolate bars, became famous for which product?

Infant formula made his name: the powdered version he had ready by 1867 only needed boiling, and it helped babies who could not be breastfed.

Which American company bought Cadbury in 2010 after a hostile takeover battle worth billions?

Kraft Foods saw its first offer in 2009 rejected as too low. The chocolate maker passed to Mondelez International when Kraft split in two in 2012.

Which chocolate brand divides its bars into unequal chunks to symbolise an unfair cocoa trade?

Tony's Chocolonely was started in 2005 by the television journalist Teun van de Keuken. The 'lonely' reflects his feeling of being the only person in the industry fighting exploitation.

Which chocolate bar from Germany was launched in 1932 to slip into a jacket pocket without breaking?

Ritter Sport was Clara Ritter's idea: a square bar that still weighed as much as a normal one. The company later dropped other lines to focus on it.

Ferrero Rocher chocolates take their name from a rocky grotto at which Marian pilgrimage shrine?

Lourdes is home to the Rocher de Massabielle, the rock that holds the shrine's grotto. Michele Ferrero, credited with inventing the chocolate, borrowed its name.

The US Army ordered Hershey's Ration D chocolate bar to taste only a little better than what?

A boiled potato was the standard Colonel Logan set, so that soldiers would keep the emergency ration for real emergencies instead of eating it as a treat.

Before its famous Chocolate Orange, Terry's sold a chocolate version of which fruit from 1926?

Apple came first and lasted until 1954, when Terry's phased it out so that it could turn out more of its orange instead.

Baci, chocolate 'kisses' wrapped in multilingual love notes, come from which Italian city?

Perugia gave its name to the maker, Perugina, founded there in 1907. Baci followed in 1922, and in 2007 the firm opened a chocolate-making school at its factory.

Karl Fazer's blue-wrapped milk chocolate, sold since 1922, is a favourite in which Nordic country?

Finland's first colour trademark, registered in 2001, protects the exact blue of the wrapper, which gives the bar its everyday name, Fazer Blue.

Which French actress plays Vianne, who opens a chocolate shop in Lent, in the 2000 film Chocolat?

Juliette Binoche earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the part. It was one of five nominations for the film, which was also up for Best Picture.