#10 The Science of Chocolate

The Science of Chocolate by Stephen T. Beckett - Click to buy @ Amazon

The Science of Chocolate
by Stephen T. Beckett (2008)

Chocolate confections are scanned by an MRI to trace the migration of fats. Softer fat is shown as lighter.

Ratings: Learn more
Quality: 4/5 – Educational, thorough
Importance: 5/5 – Choco-Hackers’ Bible
Difficulty: 5/5 – Chocolatiers only
Rarity: 2/5 – Specialty Shops

Today’s Cookbook:
The past few days we’ve gotten aesthetic blasts of chocolate technology from a chocolatier’s perspective with cookbook #8 Fine Chocolates, Great Experience and cookbook #9 Fusion Chocolate.

Today we dive even further into the chemistry of chocolate production and manufacturing with chocolate technology professor Stephen Beckett and his cookbook #10 The Science of Chocolate.

Configuration of solid and fat particles that make up chocolate: Milk, Cocoa, Sugar and Fat.

Chocolatier Chemistry

This book has everything I would ever want to know about chocolate, and then some.

From cacao harvest through chocolate production and even all the way to packaging the final confectionaries, this book covers every process in precise, chemical terms with amazing diagrams.

Here’s a breakdown of the chocolate knowledge herein:

• Cocoa Bean: Demographics of production, composition of cacao pod, fermentation and drying, storage and transport
• Chocolate Ingredients: Sugars, milk fat, whey, milk proteins, milk powder, chocolate crumb
• Cacao Processing: Bean winnowing and roasting, nib and liquor roasting, Maillard reactions during roasting, grinding and milling nibs


Chocolate particle size has a significant effect on viscosity, shown here in configurations of chocolate particle packing: All same size, Two sizes, Three sizes.

• Cocoa Production: Cocoa alkalizing (dutching), pressing cocoa butter, cocoa powder
• Making Liquid Chocolate: Milling, refining, conching, types of conches
• Chocolate Flow Properties: Controlling and measuring viscosity, particle size and structure, additions of fats and emulsifiers
• Cocoa Butter Structure: Desired crystalline forms, tempering as pre-crystallization, chocolate fat bloom, cocoa butter replacers
• Chocolate Manufacturing: Mass tempering and storage, moulding, shells, enrobers, panning, coating, and cooling.


Laser scanning microscope image of chocolate containing an emulsifier- lecithin, shown flourescent- bordering solid particles.

• Chocolate Analysis: Measuring particle size, determining moisture, measuring fat content, determining viscosity, testing flavor and texture.
• Advanced Chocolate Products: Filled chocolates, multiple centers, bubbled chocolate, retaining shape, ice-cream coatings, diet chocolate.
• Packaging: Reducing moisture and fat migration, foil and paper wraps, flow-wrapping process, biopolymers, robotic packing.
• Health: Nutrition, tooth decay, obesity, positive health effects, antioxidants, psychoactive compounds.

There really isn’t a lot more to know about the current state of chocolate manufacture.

The first step of becoming a chocolate hacker is to learn the laws of chocolate. What’s exciting about today’s book isn’t just how completely it takes this first step with you, but how the chocolate analysis techniques and experiments contained within bring you to the next step of chocolate hacking: breaking the laws of chocolate. Snap!

Various chocolate manufacturing machines. Panning machine for coating and drying chocolate-centered confections, instrument for measuring chocolate particle size with laser light scattering, and a cocoa butter press.

Today’s cookbook straight up REVERSE ENGINEERS Aero Bars, a popular UK confectionary containing huge air bubbles.

Reverse Engineering Chocolate
Professor Beckett uses his 30+ years of chocolate industry experience (at Nestle and later as a chocolate professor in Germany) to reverse engineer common chocolate confectionaries.

Techniques are discussed at depth for how to reverse engineer chocolate products and defects using scientific equipment like:

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): Trace migration of soft fat through confectionaries
• High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography: Detect flavor compounds common in chocolate (pyrazine, *-methylpyramize)
• Texture Analzyer: Determine failure point of chocolate, evaluate “snap” texture
• Differential Scanning Calorimeter: Determine spread and types of crystalline states in chocolate
• Lasers: Measuring distribution of particle size in chocolate

The author consistently goes deep into the science AND the industry, dropping cutting edge chocolate manufacturing knowledge (Aero Bars tried to aerate with CO2 gas, which didn’t taste as nice as what they use now- N2O gas).

Conclusion: Chocolate Hacker’s Bible
If you are starting a chocolate company and need to geek out on every aspect of chocolate chemistry, this is a great starter book for you. Most pastry chefs would be fine with the amount of chocolate science contained in the past two chocolate cookbooks, but if you are diagnosing some tricky chocolateering, today’s book definitely has the answer you seek.

Today’s Choco-Hacker’s Bible is part of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s food science series. Each book tackles a different aspect of food science with thorough diagrams and experiments aimed at the home chemist. This author also has a full-on Chocolate Manufacturing textbook, which would be too much detail for my bookshelf, so I prefer this mini-textbook if I need to research any aspect of chocolate, be it ingredient or technique.

Testing the snap of chocolate with a 3-point bend test: force is applied to the chocolate sample until it snaps. Poor texture chocolate bends slowly before snapping, good texture snaps quickly.

Chocolate Texture Experiment

This cookbook does not have recipes- it has procedures and experiments. Here is one such experiment:

Chocolate Hardness Measurement

GOAL:

Show that small changes in temperature have a significant effect on chocolate’s hardness

MATERIALS:

• Refrigerator
• Set of weights (kg)
• Retort stand
• Counter sink (metal rod with conical spike)
• Portable microscope
• Bars of chocolate

Color distribution of Smarties, a UK chocolate confectionary.

PROCEDURE:

1. Store some bars of the same brand of chocolate at different temperatures for at least 12 hours. Refrigerator, warm room and cupboard are good places to start.
2. Take a chocolate sample and place it in the retort stand, just below the point of the conical spike.
3. Place a weight on top of the spike carefully and balance it for a few seconds so the spike sinks into the chocolate.
4. Remove the weight and spike from the chocolate.
5. Move the sample a small amount to the side and realign the spike to the surface of the chocolate.
6. Place a bigger weight on top of the spice. Repeat several times, making a note as to which mark goes with which weight.
7. Use portable microscope to measure diameter of weighted marks. Repeat process for each bar of chocolate at different temperatures
8. Graph the diameter readings and weight applied, grouped by temperature of storage.

This experiment determines the relative hardness of chocolate at different temperatures using a simple home kitchen lab setup.