Why Can't We Resist Chocolate? A Food Scientist Explains

🍫 From its glossy appearance to its melt-in-your-mouth texture, chocolate has been an addictive, sweet treat for many centuries.
But what exactly makes it so irresistible? 😋
🔬 To understand that, we need to dive into the microscopic world of chocolate, dissecting its ingredients and unraveling its composition.
Discover the intricate microstructure of chocolate, where cocoa particles, sugar crystals, and milk proteins are suspended within a velvety cocoa butter matrix.
Learn why cocoa butter plays a pivotal role in chocolate's allure, with its unique melting profile that transforms from solid to liquid upon contact with body heat. 🍪🥛❄️
By the end of this video, you'll never look at chocolate the same way again!
🍦 Next watch THIS video next on the Science of Ice Cream • The Molecular Magic of...
0:00 Introduction
0:43 What's Chocolate (Under a Microscope)
2:35 Deep Dive into Cocoa Butter
4:24 Melt In Your Mouth Magic
7:57 Lubrication Leads to Smooth & Creamy
✅ What ingredients is chocolate made from? Most often, cocoa beans, cocoa butter, sugar, and milk powder.
❌ Can chocolate include other fats besides cocoa butter? No, in the U.S. chocolate must use cocoa butter. If another vegetable fat is used with cocoa butter, this is called compound coating.
✅ How's chocolate processed? This should probably be another video but the general steps are: Mixing ingredients, refining, conching, standardisation, tempering, forming and cooling.
❌ Does cocoa butter have a melting point? No, because cocoa butter contains many different fat molecules that each melt at different temperature, it's said to have a melting range.
❌ If a food is labeled chocolatey, chocolate-flavoured, or chocolate-like does that mean it's chocolate? No, this means the food is either using a compound coating or vegetable coating instead of chocolate. Usually this is done to save money.
📚My sources📚
-Insights into the Multiscale Lubrication Mechanism of Edible Phase Change Materials doi.org/10.1021/acsami.2c13017
-Confectionery Science and Technology link.springer.com/book/10.100...
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[@WageningenBC23]

I would like to see a part 2 and 3 on chocolate 😋

[@AbbeytheFoodScientist]

Yay, it's already in the works!

[@petergardner5951]

How about dairy butter? It remains solid at room temperature and melts at body temperature. Could they make chocolate out of butter?

[@AbbeytheFoodScientist]

That's a great question! You can't use butter because it's about 20% water and water makes chocolate "seize." It sort of gets all solid-like with even a small amount of water added. BUT, in milk chocolate especially, milk fat is used and has a great mouthfeel!

[@MohammadFarhad799]

I love to watch your content

[@AbbeytheFoodScientist]

Reading this comment absolutely made my morning :) Thank you!