50 Fun Facts About Hard Chocolate

Cocoa butter can crystallise in six forms, but only one gives chocolate its snap and gloss. Which?

Tempering is simply the process of coaxing the fat into that one crystal structure and melting out the rest.

Conching grinds cocoa and sugar particles down to roughly what size, below what the tongue can detect?

How long the conche runs decides the final smoothness, which is why premium makers boast about conching for days.

Which Italian chocolatier originally developed the conche machine credited to Rodolphe Lindt?

The story that Lindt left a mixer running over a weekend and discovered silky chocolate is probably apocryphal.

Coenraad van Houten is usually credited with the 1828 cocoa press, but who actually patented it?

Coenraad's own contribution was treating cocoa with alkaline salts, which is why the result is still called Dutch process cocoa.

Which British firm invented the eating chocolate commonly considered the first chocolate bar, in 1847?

The trick was mixing cocoa butter back into cocoa powder and sugar to make a paste that could be moulded and stayed dry.

What did Daniel Peter call the milk chocolate he invented in 1875, from the Greek word for milk?

The first eating milk chocolate brand, Gala Peter, did not launch until 1887, twelve years after the invention.

Daniel Peter's condensed milk came from a neighbour and friend who was also his supplier. Who?

Peter was based in Vevey and married into the Cailler chocolate family, so the Swiss chocolate world was a small one.

The word "chocolate" was first recorded in English in which year?

It is a Spanish loanword first written down in Spanish in 1579, and its origin before that is still argued over.

Most scholars think "chocolate" derives from chikola:tl, a word from which language?

The popular story that it comes from a Nahuatl word chocolatl is undermined by early texts, which call the drink cacahuatl, cacao water.

In which year was the first official shipment of cocoa beans to Europe recorded?

Cortés may have seen chocolate at Moctezuma's court in 1520, but Europeans took decades to acquire the taste.

Cacao was traditionally split into three varieties; how many genetic clusters has modern genetics found?

The old Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario labels survive on packaging even though the genome, sequenced in 2010, does not support them.

Cacao trees cannot tolerate temperatures below what?

They also need about 2,000 mm of rain a year, which confines them to a band within 20 degrees of the equator.

In 2024, world cocoa production reached about 5.8 million tonnes. What share came from Ivory Coast alone?

Ghana and Indonesia came next, and Africa as a whole grows more than 70% of the world's crop.

Cocoa futures trade in two cities: London handles West African cocoa; which city handles Southeast Asian cocoa?

Beans, butter and powder are all traded, which is why a bad harvest in Ivory Coast moves prices worldwide within hours.

Cacao was introduced to the Gold Coast, modern Ghana, by which Ghanaian?

Ghana now celebrates its own Chocolate Day on 14 February.

At what temperature range does cocoa butter melt, so chocolate stays solid on the shelf but melts in the mouth?

That same property makes it a standard base for medicinal suppositories.

Fat bloom on chocolate is triggered when storage temperature fluctuates or exceeds what?

Sugar bloom, by contrast, comes from cold or humidity; both are harmless and vanish on remelting.

Roughly how much milk chocolate can poison a smaller dog, per theobromine toxicology figures?

An average-sized dog can succumb from around 400 g, roughly nine small bars.

Some of the oldest surviving chocolate bars, made 1764-1795, were gifts for the courtiers of which monarch?

They are two pieces of white and dark chocolate, remarkably early for either type.

Which French pharmacist first coated pills in chocolate before building a chocolate factory at Noisiel?

Menier's tablets carried a trademark to fight counterfeits, an early sign of chocolate as a brand.

Joseph Storrs Fry patented a method of grinding cocoa beans in 1795 using what power source?

The melanger, the mixing machine most makers adopted, followed in 1811.

In which city did the widow Giambone start making chocolate eggs in emptied chicken eggshells in 1725?

Fry & Sons later made the first hollow moulded egg, the ancestor of every Easter egg on the shelf.

Chocolate truffles were created on Christmas Day 1895 by pastry chef Louis Dufour in which French city?

They were named for their resemblance to the knobbly fungus dug up in the region's forests.

How many layers of sponge does Demel's version of the Sachertorte have?

Hotel Sacher's has two, and the two Viennese rivals also argued over the trademark and where the apricot jam should go.

Confectioner Josef Keller claimed to have invented Black Forest gateau in 1915 at a café in which town?

The claim is shaky: records show he could not have arrived there until after April 1915, and the name was printed in Brandenburg in February 1915.

Which Bern patent office clerk might have handled Theodor Tobler's 1909 Toblerone patent?

Einstein was working at the Swiss patent institute at the time, though the connection is only a might-have-been.

Toblerone was made only in Bern until 2022, when part of production moved to which city?

The move meant the bar could no longer meet Swissness rules, so the Matterhorn silhouette had to come off the packaging.

Michele Ferrero named Ferrero Rocher after a grotto at which Roman Catholic shrine?

The grotto is the Rocher de Massabielle, and rocher is simply French for rock.

On what date did the first jar of Nutella leave the Ferrero factory in Alba?

Alba is famous for hazelnuts, and each 220 g jar uses roughly 50 of them.

Godiva was founded in Belgium in 1926. Which American food group bought it in 1974?

Campbell sold it in 2007 to Turkey's Yıldız Holding, whose Pladis arm now runs the brand.

Ghirardelli, incorporated in 1852, is the third-oldest chocolate company in the US. Which two are older?

Domenico Ghirardelli perfected his recipes running a general store during the California gold rush.

Baker's Chocolate began in 1764 in the Lower Mills section of which Massachusetts town?

Founder John Hannon vanished on a 1779 voyage to buy cocoa in the West Indies, and his widow sold the firm to James Baker.

Cadbury's 1879 model village gave its name to which dark chocolate bar first sold in 1908?

The Cadbury brothers built the estate four miles outside Birmingham so workers could live in the countryside.

Cadbury merged with Schweppes in which year?

The company was Cadbury Schweppes until 2008, and Kraft bought Cadbury in 2010.

Kit Kat is made by Nestlé everywhere except one country, where Hershey holds a 1970 licence. Which?

Nestlé got the brand by buying Rowntree's in 1988, but the earlier Hershey deal survived the takeover.

Rowntree's trademarked the names Kit Cat and Kit Kat in which year, long before the bar existed?

The name first went on a box of chocolates in the 1920s; the wafer bar arrived in 1935 as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp.

H. B. Reese lost his job at Hershey in 1919 when which facility he managed was shut down to save money?

He created the peanut butter cup nine years later, on 15 November 1928, and always used Hershey chocolate.

Hershey's Kisses production was briefly halted in 1942 because of wartime rationing of what?

Hershey did not get a registered trademark on the foil wrapper itself until 1976.

How heavy was Hershey's Guinness-record Reese's Take 5 bar of 31 January 2020?

It measured 9 by 5.5 by 2 feet and beat a giant Snickers made by Mars.

Mars paid $5 million to make Snickers and M&M's the 'official snack' of which event?

Snickers itself dates from 1930 and was named after the Mars family's favourite horse.

On what date did Forrest Mars receive the US patent for his M&M's process?

He had copied the idea from Smarties after watching soldiers eat them during the Spanish Civil War.

Milton Hershey was apprenticed at 14 to which Lancaster, Pennsylvania confectioner?

Hershey later learned to make caramels with fresh milk in Denver, the skill that built his first fortune.

Per the OED, the term "white chocolate" first appeared in a 1917 issue of which magazine?

It described a product of cocoa butter and sugar eaten by the Swiss Army; Nestlé did not sell white chocolate bars until 1936.

Which chocolate maker produced the first white chocolate in Spain, in 1965?

In the same decade Japanese confectioners invented White Day, a holiday built around the pale stuff.

The ballotin box for Belgian chocolates was designed in 1915 by Louise Agostini, wife of which chocolatier?

Neuhaus had introduced the filled praline three years earlier, in 1912.

Tony's Chocolonely was founded in 2005 by journalist Teun van de Keuken as a protest against what?

The name jokes that Tony felt lonely as the only person in the industry who cared; a 2007 Amsterdam court accepted his bars were slave-free.

Whittaker's, New Zealand's biggest chocolate brand, was started in 1896 in which city?

It later moved to Wellington and then to Porirua, where it still runs a bean-to-bar factory.

Dubai chocolate was co-created in 2021 by chef Nouel Catis Omamalin, of what nationality?

The bar is filled with kadayif pastry strands and pistachio-tahini cream to mimic the knafeh Hamouda's mother made.

Terry's phased out which product in 1954 to free up capacity for its more popular orange?

The Apple had actually come first, in 1926, six years before the Orange.

A 460-480 AD Mayan tomb with vessels bearing the cacao glyph and drink residue was found at which Guatemalan site?

Cacao drinks were being consumed by the Maya as early as 2,500 to 3,000 years ago.