I have posted a bunch of pictures of burning this and that on days like Qixi Festival and Valentine's Day before, but it's really not good to do this. So let's talk about chocolate ~ whether someone gives it to you, or you have someone to give it to, the taste of chocolate is very charming.

Chocolate comes from cocoa beans, which was born in the tropics. Of course, after getting cocoa beans from those oversized fruits, it takes a lot of steps to get the final chocolate. First of all, the cocoa beans are collected and then fermented and baked to produce the familiar chocolate flavor. In this process, previously tasteless amino acids produce aldehydes that are important to the flavor of cocoa.

next, cocoa beans are ground to get cocoa liquid blocks, and cocoa butter and other parts need to be separated in order to make chocolate with the right fat content and other cocoa products. Combine these two parts in the right proportion, add sugar to get dark chocolate (and, of course, some without sugar), and dairy ingredients make milk chocolate. Of course, vanillin, a vanilla-flavored spice, and additives such as lecithin are often added to improve the taste.

(the middle molecule is vanillin, which is not contained in cocoa itself, but is often added to finished chocolate. On both sides are the two representative aroma substances in cocoa)

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as for white chocolate, it contains only part of cocoa butter, sugar and dairy products (therefore, it has a lot less cocoa flavor, and many people will refuse to recognize it as a kind of chocolate).

(do you think of white chocolate as chocolate? )

of course, you can't make good chocolate simply by mixing the raw materials together. Texture and internal structure play a decisive role in the taste of chocolate. On the one hand, cocoa powder, sugar and other ingredients that are evenly dispersed should be very smooth, and all particles must be small enough not to produce a rough touch on the tongue; on the other hand, the state of cocoa butter is also critical.

the trouble with cocoa butter is that it is a polycrystalline substance, which can appear in six different crystal forms depending on the conditions. Their melting temperatures vary from high to low, and only one of them is what chocolate producers want: the fifth one in the picture below, which meets the requirement that people "melt only in the mouth but not in the hand." but after all, the temperature of the body surface is lower than that of the mouth.

the key to forming a suitable crystal form is to cool the chocolate slowly so that it has time to form a compact and regular structure. A popular science article I saw put it this way: this task is like requiring a large group of people to form a neat array. If you have enough time, you will be able to line up well, and if it is very short, it will leave a chaotic structure. Chocolate melted on a hot day will generally taste worse if it is casually frozen in the refrigerator, which is due to the change in crystal form.

in addition, chocolate "frosting" can also affect its taste. These frosts are caused by the migration of liquid fat to the chocolate surface and recrystallization. To reduce frosting, chocolate producers can reduce the pores inside chocolate, while consumers can keep chocolate at the right temperature: 18 degrees Celsius is appropriate, according to a study.

finally, although chocolate is often associated with love and flirting, it does not have any proven aphrodisiac effect (nor does any other food). There may be some healthy ingredients in chocolate, but you should also pay attention to its high calorie content. )

main references:

What\'s chocolate, and how does its chemistry inspire such cravings?

What Does Nanotechnology Have to Do with Chocolate?