Part 2 of 5

Chocolate

What the percentage means, how a bean becomes a bar, and why the bar in your cupboard has turned pale.

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• 2.1What the percentage on the bar means
  It counts cocoa solids and cocoa butter together, and the difference between those two is larger than the difference between seventy and eighty.
• 2.2From bean to bar: fermentation, roasting, conching
  Six stages, and only two of them create flavour. The rest can preserve what exists or lose it.
• 2.3Single origin: what it tells you and what it does not
  A farm, a valley and an entire country all qualify, and the flavour was decided by what somebody did to the beans rather than by the place.
• 2.4Milk, dark and white by composition
  Milk protein binds the same polyphenols that make chocolate astringent, which makes milk chocolate easier with a tannic wine than expected.
• 2.5Storing chocolate, and what bloom is
  Two faults with one appearance, and the finger tells you which one you have. Both are harmless and both change the texture.

For further context, see FDA food standards of identity.