Modern Chocolate
How and when did we move from drinking chocolate to eating chocolate?
As more people could afford to drink chocolate, the interest in its manufacture grew. Chocolate was exclusively for drinking until early Victorian times when a technique was perfected for making solid 'eating' chocolate.
Some of the earliest cocoa makers were apothecaries (early chemists) who became interested because of the supposed medicinal properties of cocoa. They had the equipment to heat, measure and blend the ingredients as well as the necessary skills.
• The inventor of 'chocolate for eating' is unknown, however in 1847, Fry & Sons of Bristol, sold a 'chocolate delicieux a manger'.
• By today's standards, the first chocolate for eating would have been considered quite unpalatable. At the time, only plain dark chocolate could be made and this refined chocolate was used for molding into blocks or bars, and for covering fruit-flavoured centres to make the first chocolate assortments.
• The Swiss introduced the first milk chocolate in the 19th century. Milk chocolate bars were very coarse, dry eating chocolate, made by blending milk powder with the basic chocolate ingredients of cocoa butter, cocoa mass and sugar. The chocolate recipe was further perfected using condensed milk to produce a chocolate with a superior taste and texture.
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