Why is White Chocolate White?
- The Edible Science
- 29 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I say Chocolate, you say brown. Well, I think some of you said sweet, but for the purpose of this article we are going to stick to Brown. A google search of chocolate on the internet is going to yield a thousand pictures of brown chocolates wrapped in cute fancy papers. Is that why, a lot of people even argue that white chocolate isn’t even chocolate? Why is it white? Is there an added component that goes into it, or has it been robbed of some component? If so, would it be wrong to consider it as a chocolate. Let’s find out.
White Chocolate is made from the same source as chocolate which is Cocoa bean. These beans when fermented and dried, followed by removal of the skin, gives a Cocoa nib. Roasted Cocoa nibs are then ground to give cocoa liquor. The cocoa liquor has 'Cocoa Solids' and 'Cocoa butter' White chocolate is made with cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids. When the solids are removed, and the cocoa butter is mixed with some components, mainly sugar, milk, cream and vanilla, the resultant mixture is what makes a white chocolate.
White chocolate was initially popular in Europe, it only opened up a wider market in the US in 1984.Nestle originally was the first company to commercially introduce white chocolate in Switzerland in 1930s. Like some wonderful innovations in the food industry, white chocolate too turned out to be an accidental invention. Nestle, at that point of time was involved in dietary supplements for children. Named as ‘Nestrovit’, it would a powdered milk, rich in minerals. Instead of marketing it as a powder, they wanted to test it in the form of a solid bar to gain more market in kids section where they could sell it as a bar. They used cocoa butter to solidify the milk. And lo behold! The first white chocolate bar was created. By 1936, Nestle gifted this invention to the market, which we know today as ‘Milkybar’.
After Milkybar, several other companies invested in the development of products in this portfolio, one of which was Hershey’s Cookies N Cream Bar, which also added chocolate cookie pieces. White chocolate, up until 2002, was in the confectonary coating category. Hershey Foods Corporation and the Chocolate Manufacturers Association filed a petition in 2002, which later accounted for the white chocolate to move into the ‘Chocolate’ Segment. However, with more companies moving into this segment, what transpired a few years later was an exhaustive use of sweeteners and fillers replacing actual cocoa butter. Therefore, FDA standardized use of minimum 20% cocoa butter to claim the product as White Chocolate.
Moving ahead to the characteristics of the chocolate, its sweeter and creamier in nature. The melting temperature of Cocoa butter is somewhat narrow, which gives white chocolate a peculiar creamier mouthfeel. This helps it to complement the main signature notes of other dishes, for example, with matcha. That is why, even strawberry cheesecake with white chocolate would be a great hit. The cocoa butter elevates the mouthfeel in the dessert.
White chocolate lacks cocoa solids in its composition, which also means, that it lacks the beneficial antioxidants and flavonoids present in dark chocolate and milk chocolate. In addition to stripping away the white chocolate from health benefits in contrast to its counterparts, it also has a significant impact on the product stability aspect. Non-enyzmatic browning reaction and oxidation process reduces the shelf life. Several studies have been done to enhance the shelf life of the product, and which has created a category of ‘Functional White Chocolate’. To name a few, encapsulations of Eicosa-Pentaenoic acid, Cinnamon Extract, encapsulated β-carotene have been experimented with.
Having that been said, while science continues to move ahead, and comes up with healthier formulations of the sweet treat, white chocolate will continue to be sweetly relished in desserts, and even as a dessert on its own. What is your take on the sweet treat?
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