h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm coming across some inconsistencies with After Eight (A12804798) products. Some are labelled as Plain chocolate, and some as Dark. What is the difference?

So far I've had these -

>"I think there is a difference in cocoa content. dark chocolate has more cocoa than plain chocolate" (Not him)

>"My limited knowledge on chocolate (considering as I don't eat it, is that dark is 70% or 80% cocoa solids, whereas plain is just without milk added." (Mazin)

Can you shine any more light on this subject?

CD/Em

I've always been under the impression Dark choclate has a high cocoa percentage, Milk chocolate has, well milk in it for a start or perhaps milk powder (not being a chocolate maker I'm not sure how they do it) and perhaps more sweetners than plain. Plain I think is without milk or (at least not so much) sweetners and lower on cocoa than dark chocolate

but I'm not 100% certain. I'll leave it to someone else to verify/ correct me

I thought the terms were synonymous. I could be wrong but I don't think there's anything to stop a company calling any non-milk chocolate "dark". Individual companies might draw their own distinctions of course. Even New Scientist mixes the terms: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4101

Hmmm according to the online dictionary I use, there's no such thing as Plain chocolate - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Plain%20chocolate

However, there is a definition for Dark chocolate - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Dark%20chocolate

I'm even more confused now

Emmily

Dictionaries don't necessarily list phrases like that. What that probably demonstrates is that "dark chocolate" is a much more common term. It kicks butt in a Googlefight as well:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=plain+chocolate&word2=dark+chocolate

I just like milk chocolate a lot better

Is there already a guide entry on different types of chocolate? If not, perhaps this could spurn one all of its own? or perhaps with better information it could be updated

I was thinking about this last night. I think, infact that Plain and Dark chocolate are the same. You're right. I was just tricked into thinking they're different by the biscuit companies (or just slow )

But this interests me: What is white chocolate ?

White choc is not choc!

It´s made out of cacao butter, milk and vanilla or other flavourings.

To be called chocolate a product must contain chocolate liquor, which gives the bitter intense chocolate flavour and the dark colour.

Ah, well why do companies get away with calling it white chocolate then? Isnt that breaking some "a product must only be advertised as what it is" law?

Dragonqueen, I suspect you'll be suing Hershey's, Nestle, etc. for false advertising then? Can you keep us abreast of your lawsuit?

Are you sure about that? I always thought that as long as the product contains cocoa, it can be connected to the chocolate family

from the research I've been doing, white chocolate contains cocoa butter, not noticed any with vanilla in, and other chocolate contains cocoa mass, not seen any chocolate liquor in the ingredients.

Emmily

There is an Entry on Chocolate - A177059 but it doesn't include the different types of chocolate. Good idea to have an Entry on different types of chocolate Bulletproof Cupid, I'll add that to the list of suggestted Entries next time I sign in the Club

Emmily

Good luck with this project

Hope I havent started some sort of argument here

I had to do some Googling because, when I helped my wife research a paper for cooking school on chocolate several months back, I'd never heard of the phrase "plain chocolate." I assumed you were talking about pure chocolate, which nobody really wants.

Upon further review, it looks like it's a British term that is interchangeable with "dark chocolate." It'll have about 70-80% cocoa solids. Any more than that, and it becomes so bitter it's no longer palatable. Milk chocolate will be around 40% chocolate solids, with higher sugar content and milk solids making up most of the rest of the mass. White chocolate, as said before, it made up primarily of cocoa butter, and has no cocoa solids at all. It's a whole different animal.

<>

Just about every chocolate product you've ever had included a touch of vanilla for flavoring, including white, milk, and even dark chocolates.

I think the term Plain may have come about because in the olden days chocolate was what we now know as Plain/Dark chocolate. There was no need to call it dark, it was just chocolate.

Then milk chocolate was invented and so Plain was chocolate without any extra milk added. And we now call it Dark Chocolate.

A tin of little Terrys Chocolate Oranges states that
Dark is 50% minimum cocoa solids and Milk is 25% minimum cocoa solids and 20% minimum milk.

And talking of types of chocolate, Britain was in a 30 year "war" with Europe over whether what we in the UK know of as chocolate could even be called chocolate as it contains 5% vegetable fats. One idea was to call it vegelate.

Anyway it all had a happy ending and now it can be called Family Milk Chocolate.