Chocolate's Numbers Game
Despite everything you have probably heard about the number 70 and chocolate, there is absolutely no (none, nada, zilch) relationship between cocoa content and chocolate quality.
70 per cent is a quantitative measure not a qualitative measure. The only thing that the cocoa content of a chocolate tells you is what percentage of the chocolate, by weight, is derived from actual cocoa beans. It does not tell you, for example, the relative amounts of cocoa butter and cocoa powder, which have a profound affect on texture and taste.
Just as an 86 proof vodka is not better than an 80 proof vodka just because it has 3 per cent more alcohol, a 70 per cent cocoa content chocolate is not better than a 65 per cent cocoa content chocolate just because it has 5 per cent more cocoa.
The proof content of a spirit tells you nothing at all about the ingredients used to make it, the processes or equipment used, the skill of the person or people who make it, and absolutely nothing at all about what the spirit tastes like, what it smells like, or how smooth it is.
The same holds true for chocolate: the cocoa content is not a clue to anything except...the cocoa content. The number 70 provides absolutely no information about the quality of the cocoa beans, if those cocoa beans were processed properly, how the beans were roasted, how much and what kind of vanilla (if any) was used to make the chocolate, what the chocolate tastes like, what it smells like, or what the texture is. And it is not a reliable indicator of how "healthy" the chocolate might be.
Come again? If there's no connection, why is there this fixation on the number 70?
It's a case of marketing hype, pure and simple.
Cocoa Content Is Not a Qualitative Measure
You see, chocolate is a very complex food to describe, like wine. In the absence of generally accepted rating systems published by major magazines by respected critics, the chocolate industry needed something to use as a benchmark for quality chocolate and so the quantitative measure of cocoa content began to be promoted as a qualitative measure. And chocolate fans who did not know any different bought into it.
One of the most popular mistaken impressions that people have about cocoa percentage is the belief that the higher the percentage the more bitter the chocolate has to be. In fact, there is no legal distinction between semi-sweet and bittersweet chocolate, no magical ratio of cocoa to sugar at which point a chocolate automagically crosses the line from semi- to bitter.
Where Does Bitterness in Chocolate Come From?
Bitterness in chocolate tends to come from two sources: bitter compounds in the cocoa beans that remain after fermentation (usually insufficient fermentation), and burning the beans during roasting. Under certain circumstances it is possible to have a low cocoa content chocolate that is very bitter, even with a lot of sugar in the recipe, because of the use of poorly fermented beans and over-roasting. It is also possible to have a high cocoa content chocolate that is not bitter because of the use of well-fermented beans and time and attention paid to all of the manufacturing processes (which is expensive), not just roasting.
Most people also mistakenly believe that the "better" the chocolate the more robust the chocolate flavor is. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The highly prized and sought after criollo bean, especially the Porcelana variety, makes very delicately nuanced chocolate whose look can often be confused with milk chocolate because it is such a light brown. Because cocoa beans in the criollo family contain very low amounts of the bitter compounds that give beans from the forastero family their dark purple coloration, very little fermentation is needed and roasting must be handled carefully to ensure that the delicate flavors of the bean are not destroyed through even the slightest over-roasting.
Trust Your Taste
If 70 per cent is not a reliable guide, what is? Your own sense of taste, for one; what you like is what you like, irrespective of the cocoa content.
When people tell me, "I only eat chocolate that is 70 per cent cocoa content or higher," I know they are snobs who actually know very little about chocolate. Their insistence on treating cocoa percentage as a qualitative measure is the measure of their ignorance. These are the same people who will probably tell you that drinkers of white Zinfandel can't truly be serious about wine.
If there is a "right" way to approach eating a chocolate that is new to you, then that right way is to approach each new chocolate without preconceptions: with an open mind and a clean palate. In the end, it is all about what you like. A chocolate is not automatically good just because it has 70 per cent cocoa. I like to think of myself as an equal opportunity chocolate lover: white, milk, dark I don't really care. As long as it's good I love it. I do not get hung up at all about how much cocoa is in the chocolate I eat—and neither should you.
About the author: Clay Gordon has been a professional chocolate critic since 2001 and is considered a pioneer of the literary genre of serious criticism about chocolate. His thoughts on chocolate have appeared in the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week, among many others. He has appeared on Oprah, on programs aired on Food Network and History Channel, and has been a regular guest on Martha Stewart Living Radio. Clay's first book on chocolate, Discover Chocolate was selected as a finalist in the International Association of Culinary Professionals' 2008 Cookbook of the Year Awards. A serious chocolate educator, Clay has created and moderates an online community for chocophiles and aspiring chocophiles, The Chocolate Life as well as helping to create and lead tours for serious chocolate fans for The Chocolate Lovers Travel Club.
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8 Comments:
So what are your favorites, if I may ask? The selection now is bewildering.
i8alot at 12:01PM on 05/21/08
Yes, please enlighten us. Is it just like it is with wine, that you have to drink as much as possible to find what you like? What other explicit measures of quality are there, other than the type of bean? Personally, I avoid any chocolate that has soy products added to it, to me that is an immediate indicator of poor quality. What else can we look for, simply by reading the label, to help make a selection?
simon at 12:23PM on 05/21/08
Do you have a reference for that study?
monkeycat at 1:11PM on 05/21/08
you're not entirely correct - while the percentage doesn't reflect quality, per se, it does have a great deal to do with the flavor, bitterness and overall sensation. a 99% bar will UNDOUBTEDLY be more bitter and less sweet than a 70% bar because there simply isn't enough % left over for sugar, vanilla or cocoa butter.
sfmatthew at 3:37PM on 05/21/08
I don't know that it's helpful or informative to be equally as dogmatic as the "I only eat X" crowd in implying that there is little connection between cocoa percentage and taste. Sure, it's fair to say that a given 65 percent bar is not objectively better than its 70 percent counterpart, but consistently preferring the latter is legitimate perference of taste that isn't necessarily the result of kowtowing blindly to pure marketing. It's difficult to see what you're trying to get at here--all else being equal, I do prefer a ~72-plus percent bar. As a simple, non-expert chocolate lover, it is a reliable enough measure of a one specific type of flavor that I seek in chocolate that I do not expect to be magically in a linear relationship with overall "quality," but it is a variable in that equation.
mabisa at 1:13AM on 05/22/08
I think that some might be missing Clay's point, that being, cocoa solid percentage is not necessarily an indicator of quality, cocoa flavor intensity, sweetness, or bitterness. As a confectioner, I work with a superb 65% from Venezuela that has more intensity than most 70%'s that are on the market. I also work with a 74% from the Dominican Republic that is less bitter and far more elegant that many 72's on the market. And, not all 70's or 72's are created equal. Some are great, some are merely good, and some are bad. Happy chocolate hunting!
kiseichocolates at 10:28AM on 05/27/08
I apologize for the delay in getting back to you all on these comments, I was in Belize leading a chocolate tour and the Internet connection was down all week.
I wrote what I did in a more simplistic way than I could have, in part because I have been asked to keep my posts to a certain length (my first was way long) and in part because I wanted to be deliberately provocative. Necessarily, there are many things I wanted to say that got tossed into the editorial bit-bucket during the process of editing for length.
Perhaps more to the point is that I expect readers of Serious Eats to be, well, more serious about what they eat and more willing to consider alternate viewpoints that challenge the perceptions they hold about certain foods than a general audience. Readers of Serious Eats are a self-selected group and while mabisa might not expect there to be a linear relationship between cocoa content and chocolate quality, less sophisticated chocolate fans have come to look at 70% as a magic number that defines a minimum level of quality. It is these nouveau pseudo-chocophiles that tend to be the snobs.
It is accurate to say that while there is no consistent relationship between cocoa content and chocolate quality it is possible to generalize that a 72% chocolate is likely to be more bitter than a 60%. Likely: Not necessarily. Like most generalizations, there are exceptions, and there are enough exceptions to make the generalization not useful - for me.
As for my favorites ...
kiseichocolates talks about the 74% chocolate from the DR. This has to be the Hacienda Helvesia from Felchlin and I agree with the assessment about its lack of bitterness and the elegance (I would also add finesse) of the chocolate. If you like dark chocolate this is one of the best currently being made - but it is not widely available unless you are a professional. (If enough of you are interested I can look into getting some.) It is rich and earthy and intense and totally satisfying. The 65% Venezuelan is also from Felchlin, the Maracaibo Clasificado, another superb chocolate.
They are not Felchlin's best, however, a designation I bestow on the 2005 harvest of their Cru Sauvage, a 68% bar made from beans harvested from feral (formerly domesticated and now growing wild (or untended)) trees growing in the Beni region of northeastern Bolivia. This chocolate had a light, airy taste with citrusy notes that was high up in the nose and a texture that I refer to as dissolving rather than melting.
My favorite chocolates are ones that challenge my perception of what tastes and textures in chocolate can be. Because I like varietal and origin chocolates, I tend to shy away from picking a chocolate as my favorite because I know that next year's version is going to taste different. The wine analogy that works for me is to say that you like the style of a particular vineyard (say Clarendon Hill in Australia) because you've tasted a bunch of their wines and have liked what you taste. You'd then point to one or more particular examples, say the 2005 Grenache, that you especially liked. The 2004 you might not have liked as well.
With chocolate, you might say that you like the style of, say, Felchlin, and that you particularly like the Creole a 49% milk chocolate. Or you like the style of Valrhona, but particularly like the Apamakia.
Chocolate works that way for me. I like (among many others) Felchlin, Pralus, and Bonnat so I am willing to try anything they make because I know it will be very well made. For each chocolate maker I have specific favorites. I had a very interesting tasting of bars from Cacao Sampaka (Barcelona) while in Belize and was sufficiently impressed, especially by their 100% Ecuadorean, to add them to the short list of companies whose new work I search out to try.
And yes, it takes eating a lot of chocolate (tough, I know) to reach a point of knowing what you like so that when you taste it in a chocolate you know it instantly.
Finally the addition of soy lecithin is not necessarily an indication of poor quality. Most chocolate manufacturers use it. Lecithin is used to thin out the chocolate to make it easier to mold. One-half per cent lecithin can replace about 3 per cent cocoa butter, so it is also less expensive. Most manufacturers who have stopped using lecithin in their chocolate have done so because it's hard to find lecithin that is certified GMO-free and a surprising number of people are allergic to soy.
Clay Gordon at 5:03PM on 05/31/08
Clay,
In unflavored chocolate, isn't the majority of the percentage that isn't cacao used by sugar? So if a bar is 70% cacao, wouldn't it be 28-29% sugar? If this is true then the lower the cacao percentage the higher the sweetness. This is the main factor that I find the cacao percentage to be a relative indicator of. For me, if a bar is too sweet I don't like it as much, so the number 70 is a relative guide to this aspect.
P.S.- I'm Theo Broma on TCL.
Olorin at 4:15PM on 06/20/08