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This is very strange to see on HN this morning...I was bored last night while eating a piece of dark chocolate, and began wondering how exactly they make it. I
by jihadjihad 5y ago
This is very strange to see on HN this morning...I was bored last night while eating a piece of dark chocolate, and began wondering how exactly they make it.
I learned something fascinating: the primary thing that distinguishes "good" chocolate from "bad" chocolate, apart from taste, is the texture--more specifically, the crystal structure of tempered cocoa butter. There are in fact six different crystal forms of cocoa butter [0], each with its own unique properties. The "goal" when making good chocolate is to allow as many Type V crystals to form as possible, because they have the best properties (great texture, good snap, glossy appearance as opposed to matte, and the melting temp is higher, closer to body temp).
In order to form a majority of Type V crystals, chocolate is first melted at a high temp to wipe the slate clean, so to speak (all six crystal forms are melted). It's then cooled so that Type IV and V crystals can form, then heated again slightly to melt any remaining Type IV crystals, leaving only Type V. Wonderful stuff!
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Tempering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Tempering
- knuthsat 5y agoSounds a lot like annealing.
- riffraff 5y agoit's called "tempering", tempering and annealing are somewhat similar processes.
- Xophmeister 5y agoYou can also do it by seeding, using chocolate with the right crystalline structure. This method is usually a lot less troublesome than the thermal shocking (tempering) approach.
- dylan604 5y agoThat sounds like the non-HNer way of doing something. An HN reader will want to try doing it with a RaspPi or Arduino to control the temps to ensure a perfect level of Type V crystals. Maybe right up some code in Rust with React Native UI. Then, come up with test units to show the Type V levels are within parameters. No HNer would ever do this by hand when a weekend of coding/building could solve the problem.
- SyzygistSix 5y agoDoing that ends up requiring expensive equipment. And even then, it is common to seed chocolate. It's the same thing as using a yeast starter.
- wastedhours 5y agoYou can also seed with the cocoa butter you add in, seeding with pre-tempered chocolate tends to require more added as far as I remember.
- gonehome 5y agoYou can see them do this tempering process often when working with chocolate in The Great British Baking Show (in order to get the chocolate to be shiny).
- RangerScience 5y agoAh, but that's only the case for tempered chocolate! You can find a lot of the older style (stone ground) around, and notably, the Sicilian town of Modica has a 300+ history of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cioccolato_di_Modica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cioccolato_di_Modica