On 12/27/2025 at 12:21 AM, StringJunky said:

Whisky and Whiskey are not made the same way. [...] They are different drinks.

To paraphrase you, regular chocolate and American chocolate are not the same thing either.. ;)

British milk chocolate ?
Never heard anyone say good things about any British foods.

Maybe Swiss, Belgian, German or Italian chocolate.
Even the Polish chocolate from the Deli next door is great.

But what do I know; I only like dark chocolate.

33 minutes ago, MigL said:

British milk chocolate ?
Never heard anyone say good things about any British foods.

Some of the pub grub when I was in London was not bad, and filling, if you had walked for miles and needed calories. But when it came to truly good food (with actual roughage) my mainstay was a Greek restaurant, with Indian a close second.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

British milk chocolate ?
Never heard anyone say good things about any British foods.

Maybe Swiss, Belgian, German or Italian chocolate.
Even the Polish chocolate from the Deli next door is great.

But what do I know; I only like dark chocolate..

Thought this was a decent article(It mentions the Hershey Bar and the manufacturing process generally)

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231221-why-british-chocolate-tastes-the-way-it-does

Edited December 31, 2025Dec 31 by geordief

I prefer the Belgian - more cacao less milk. Really, straight dark is the best. And Belgium and France both do that well.

Happy 2026, you Limeys and random Euro trash! 😃

15 hours ago, MigL said:

British milk chocolate ?
Never heard anyone say good things about any British foods.

Maybe Swiss, Belgian, German or Italian chocolate.
Even the Polish chocolate from the Deli next door is great.

But what do I know; I only like dark chocolate.

There is quite a bit of good British food in fact, but we still live with the hangover of our postwar austerity, which for decades caused us to lose faith and fail to do justice to it. These days you can eat better in London than in many capital cities. But it’s true that provincial standards of cooking are rather uneven, shall we say.

You are dead right about British industrial milk chocolate, though. Most Continentals wouldn’t consider it chocolate at all, adulterated as it is by non cocoa fats etc. I believe Cadbury’s Dairy Milk no longer qualifies at chocolate under EU rules - not enough cocoa-derived content.

19 hours ago, MigL said:

British milk chocolate ?
Never heard anyone say good things about any British foods.

Maybe Swiss, Belgian, German or Italian chocolate.
Even the Polish chocolate from the Deli next door is great.

But what do I know; I only like dark chocolate.

The taste of chocolate bars varies considerably according to the manufacturing process used to create them. In Europe cocoa beans were orginally mainly roasted and ground into a powder used to make  a rather bitter hot drink - not dissimilar to the use of roasted coffee beans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_bar

The development of ‘Eating Chocolate’ arose from a new process first developed by a Dutch chemist in 1828 that separated cocoa butter from the shell of the bean and neutralised the bitter taste with alkali salts. It was a British confectioner Joseph Fry here in Bristol UK who had the idea of recombining this extracted ‘butter’ with the ground chocolate powder and extra sugar to create a smooth and stable eating ‘tablet’ of chocolate around 1847.

British chocolate must contain at least  20% of cocoa solids by law, whereas American chocolate need only contain 10% -  hence the waxier taste found in Hershey bars - they contain higher levels of cocoa butter and vegetable oil.

Milk chocolate was invented in Switzerland around 1875 by adding condensed milk into the cocoa powder and butter mix as well.

Dark chocolate commonly contains around  70% cocoa solids.

1 hour ago, toucana said:

hereas American chocolate need only contain 10% -  hence the waxier taste found in Hershey bars - they contain higher levels of cocoa butter and vegetable oil

Did you notice the butyric acid content in my BBC article?

Shelf life is King.

9 minutes ago, geordief said:

Did you notice the butyric acid content in my BBC article?

Shelf life is King.

Butyric acid smells like vomit. Why anyone would add that to chocolate beats me.

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

There is quite a bit of good British food in fact, but we still live with the hangover of our postwar austerity,

I guess that like me you recall when chocolate treats for children at least we're pretty well confined to Easter and Christmas.

From @geordief 's link:

What's more, milk is about the only ingredient in which there is a genuine, consistent difference across borders, according to Stephen Beckett, editor of Beckett's Industrial Chocolate Manufacture and Use, the go-to tome for food scientists learning about chocolate. Beckett, who worked for the British confectionary brand Rowntree's, was from York, England, and in 2003, in the International Journal of Dairy Technology, he delved into the question of British milk chocolate's elusive flavor. It is almost the only public document tackling the issue, and Beckett begins by defining chocolate as a solid fat speckled with sugar, cocoa, and milk solids.

I was born in York (actually played rugby for Rowntrees until I was thirty) and particularly remember those foggy November evenings when on the south-west side of town, the citrus aroma of Terry's chocolate orange slowly spread across the Knavesmire while on the other side of the river it was the heady, minty scent of Rowntrees After Eights signalling that Christmas was only a few short weeks away.

I think the quality must have been pretty good because back then, everyone knew the taste of Rowntrees cocoa and that was a pretty good yardstick.

The rot set in when chocolate ceased to be something special and became part of the mass-produced daily diet.

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by sethoflagos

2 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

I guess that like me you recall when chocolate treats for children at least we're pretty well confined to Easter and Christmas.

From @geordief 's link:

I was born in York (actually played rugby for Rowntrees until I was thirty) and particularly remember those foggy November evenings when on the south-west side of town, the citrus aroma of Terry's chocolate orange slowly spread across the Knavesmire while on the other side of the river it was the heady, minty scent of Rowntrees After Eights that Christmas was only a few short weeks away.

I think the quality must have been pretty good because back then, everyone knew the taste of Rowntrees cocoa and that was a pretty good yardstick.

The rot set in when chocolate ceased to be something special and became part of the mass-produced daily diet.

Those were both dark chocolate products, though, weren’t they?

8 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Those were both dark chocolate products, though, weren’t they?

When the trend towards milk chocolate began after WWI, Rowntrees and Terry's decided not to try competing with Cadbury's for that end of the market. They specialised on more niche and quality products.

25 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

When the trend towards milk chocolate began after WWI, Rowntrees and Terry's decided not to try competing with Cadbury's for that end of the market. They specialised on more niche and quality products.

That’s something I never knew.

36 minutes ago, exchemist said:

That’s something I never knew.

Our family home for nearly fifty years was 64, Main Street, Askham Bryan. Ken Dixon lived at 54. It's a small village with just the one pub.

2 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

It's a small village with just the one pub.

LOL. The British estimate the size of a city/town/village based on the number of pubs located there... ;)

ps. That wouldn't work in the Middle East ;)

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

Butyric acid smells like vomit. Why anyone would add that to chocolate beats me.

From the link:

"This is because the milk is intentionally broken down during the manufacturing process, yielding a substance called butyric acid, while making a chocolate that's more shelf-stable. Famously, this acid is also present in vomit and partly responsible for its smell, a fact that has fueled many a headline. (Butyric acid is responsible for the smell of rancid butter, but it is also used to create certain food flavourings.)"

They also say there that an acquired taste sticks.

But you can also add asafoetida (Devil's Dung) to cooking It smells awful on its own but seemingly combines well (have never really tried it)

Of course the taste of sick sounds even worse than dung and I find Hershey bars underwhelming in any case. (more of a Snickers man in that way, while I have the whole of my teeth)

Edited 18 hours ago18 hr by geordief

4 hours ago, toucana said:

British chocolate must contain at least  20% of cocoa solids by law, whereas American chocolate need only contain 10% -  hence the waxier taste found in Hershey bars - they contain higher levels of cocoa butter and vegetable oil.

That 10% is for milk chocolate. In the US, we have abominations labeled “chocolatey” (and a few other possibilities) to try and trick the customer when they fall short of the already-low 10%

https://www.bethschocolate.com/chocolate-vs-chocolatey/?srsltid=AfmBOoqVX_pg4A7a_ltKGczzCyJQlhQAfgvXoT7fCZlU8yXOsC-jHKo9

The article also notes that EU rules mandate a 25% minimum

Ghirardelli has a good "intense dark" at 72%. Just the right note of bitter for my palate. Amano Madagascar is also a good small batch dark. My main criterion is a short ingredient list. And all brands have tested with some cadmium and lead, so that suggests saving for special occasions. As with a lot of foods, I would suspect that pretty high consumption is needed to get to noticeable toxicities. I've heard theories that some of Van Gogh's problems related to his use of cadmium yellow pigment.

3 hours ago, geordief said:

while I have the whole of my teeth

You Brits still have problems with your teeth ?
( I'll be turning 67 and still have 32 teeth, including wisdom, although you'd never know it )

The saying used to be that Brits have bad teeth but the women have big boobs.
I hope one of those has changed.

28 minutes ago, MigL said:

You Brits still have problems with your teeth ?
( I'll be turning 67 and still have 32 teeth, including wisdom, although you'd never know it )

The saying used to be that Brits have bad teeth but the women have big boobs.

I hope one of those has changed.

Snickers are very sticky and I was joking they might suck out a loose filling(or even a whole tooth)

The last time I had a problem was when I bit on a hazelnut in a Ritters bar and took off a quarter of the top of my root canal -in the middle of Covid with the dentists shut.

When my mother was on one of her last journeys,the ambulance assistant reached into her mouth to remove her "dentures" except that she still had her own teeth and he couldn't get them out.

(I count 22 teeth plus 2 spaces-boobs,don't ask)

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by geordief

1 hour ago, MigL said:

You Brits still have problems with your teeth ?
( I'll be turning 67 and still have 32 teeth, including wisdom, although you'd never know it )

The saying used to be that Brits have bad teeth but the women have big boobs.
I hope one of those has changed.

French women, e.g. my late wife, have a theory that English women have good complexions. Boobs, I could not say. I don’t usually notice them much.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by exchemist

On 12/31/2025 at 1:10 PM, MigL said:

British milk chocolate ?
Never heard anyone say good things about any British foods.

Maybe Swiss, Belgian, German or Italian chocolate.
Even the Polish chocolate from the Deli next door is great.

But what do I know; I only like dark chocolate.

I am not sure whether that has been addressed in the video, but the chocolate in NA, including Canada usually has less cocoa, but way more sugar and other vegetable fats even from the same brands. The sugar is the most noticeable difference, when you are used to (most) European chocolate, which includes those from the UK. Polish chocolate used to be poor quality, but the last time I had some was in the 90s.

That being said, sugar content has been increasing also in Europe over time.