NOOKS AND CRANNIES

Why does white chocolate taste as it does and what is it made from?

John Clayton, Cambridge

  • Funnily enough, white chocolate is made from the cocoa bean. If you open up a fresh cocoa bean, the flesh is white. This is where the flavour comes from. However, because the bean isn't roasted, which is what gives 'milk' or 'dark' chocolate its flavour, white chocolate is 'white'.

    Nick, London UK

  • The flesh of a cocoa bean is certainly NOT white, nor is it fleshy. The centre of a cocoa bean is called "nib", and is hard and brown. I know this because the factory in which I am senior process engineer processes about 50,000 tonnes of cocoa beans a year. The first answer was closer, in that white chocolate is a combination of pressed, filtered and refined cocoa butter, milk, sugar and other vegetable fats. It contains no "cocoa solids" at all.

    Simon Blake, England

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