Chocolate types

Cocoa solids, cocoa butter and sugar, with no milk solids. The percentage on the front adds those first two together and says nothing about their ratio.

Cocoa solids, cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids. The one category where the same words mean materially different products in the EU and the US.

Cocoa butter, milk solids and sugar, with no cocoa solids. Legally chocolate in both the EU and the US, despite the persistent belief that it is not.

A pink, tart chocolate introduced commercially in 2017. The process is proprietary, which means the catalogue can describe what it is and cannot fully explain how.

A US standard of identity that shares its legal floor with semisweet chocolate — which means the two words guarantee nothing about the difference readers assume between them.

The other half of the bittersweet pair, and the default chocolate in American home baking. Legally identical to bittersweet; conventionally a little sweeter.

The genuinely distinct third dark category in the US standards, defined at a much lower cacao floor — and the one behind the 'German chocolate' in German chocolate cake.

Pure cocoa mass with nothing added. Not pleasant to eat and not meant to be — it delivers more chocolate flavour per gram into a recipe than anything else.

Milk chocolate built at dark chocolate's cacao levels. A craft-sector category rather than a legal one, and the most interesting place to taste what milk actually does.

Chocolate blended with roasted hazelnut paste, from Piedmont. The origin of the entire chocolate-hazelnut category, invented because cacao was scarce.

Milk chocolate's texture built from oat, rice, coconut or nut solids instead of dairy — and in most jurisdictions it may not be called milk chocolate at all.

Dark chocolate at 80% and above. Not a legal category, and the range where a bar's faults stop being hideable.

White chocolate cooked until its milk sugars caramelise. A technique rather than a composition, and one you can do at home.

Chocolate sweetened with polyols or high-intensity sweeteners instead of sucrose. The texture problem is the interesting part.

Chocolate made without roasting, or with minimal heat. An unregulated claim, and one the fermentation step complicates considerably.

Chocolate with solid additions worked in — nuts, fruit, salt, spice. The constraint is water, and it is stricter than it looks.

Milk chocolate made by cooking milk, sugar and cocoa mass together and drying the result before refining. The reason several British bars taste the way they do.

Chocolate with no animal-derived ingredient. Most plain dark chocolate already qualifies — the claim is doing work about the factory, not about the recipe.

Chocolate carrying an added flavour rather than an added solid — and the category almost every regional speciality bar belongs to.

Cracked, winnowed cacao bean — the raw material of every chocolate there is, sold as an ingredient in its own right.

Ground nibs in fluid form, and the branch point of the entire industry. It contains no alcohol.

The fat pressed from cacao, and the reason chocolate melts in the mouth rather than in the hand. Its crystal behaviour is why tempering exists.

What remains after the cocoa butter is pressed out, milled to a powder. Concentrated cocoa solids with almost no fat — which is why it cannot substitute for chocolate.

Cocoa powder that has not been alkalised. Acidic, lighter in colour, sharper in flavour — and it reacts with bicarbonate of soda, which Dutch-process cocoa does not.

Cocoa powder treated with an alkali to neutralise its acidity. Darker, smoother, less sharp — and inert with bicarbonate of soda.

The papery husk blown away during winnowing. Long treated as waste, increasingly brewed as an infusion.

The white mucilage around the beans in the pod. The fermentation's fuel, and — increasingly — a product in its own right.

Heavily alkalised cocoa powder, near-black in colour. Used for appearance rather than flavour, and it is milder than it looks.

Cocoa powder pressed harder, leaving less cocoa butter. Cheaper, drier in use, and a distinct EU category.

Vegetable fats engineered to behave like cocoa butter. The EU permits a limited quantity in chocolate and requires it declared.

Thin chocolate fragments produced by scraping a set sheet. A decorating ingredient, and one that melts on contact.

Chocolate scraped from a set sheet at the temperature where it rolls rather than shatters. Temperature is the whole technique.

Chocolate shaved or grated straight from a bar. The simplest decoration, and the only one that needs no tempering.

Extruded chocolate strands, and a Dutch breakfast staple rather than only a cake decoration.

A manufacturing grade, not a composition. Chocolate with a high cocoa butter content, made to be melted, tempered and used as a coating.

Cocoa solids with vegetable fat in place of cocoa butter. In most jurisdictions it may not legally be called chocolate — and it does one thing better than chocolate does.

Chocolate formulated to NOT melt. Lower cocoa butter and often added stabilisers, so the pieces hold their shape through a bake — which makes them the wrong choice whenever the chocolate should disappear.

Couverture in small disc or bead form. A packaging decision with real practical consequences: uniform pieces melt evenly and make seeding straightforward.

The default professional coating chocolate: dark composition, high cocoa butter, tempered at 31–32°C.

Milk composition at couverture fat levels. Tempers a degree or two cooler than dark, and scorches sooner.

The most heat-sensitive of the three and the hardest to temper — high sugar, high milk solids and no cocoa solids at all.

Chocolate formulated to hold its shape through an oven. The batons inside a pain au chocolat, and a close relative of the chocolate chip.

Larger and more irregular than chips, and generally formulated to melt rather than to hold shape — the opposite trade-off.

Couverture sweetened with polyols. It tempers, with a slightly different curve and a softer set.

Extruded sticks of bake-stable chocolate, made to survive a hot oven inside a laminated pastry.

A ganache centre, rolled or moulded and coated. Named for its resemblance to the fungus, and the confection where the ratio does more work than the recipe.

Three genuinely different products share this word in Belgium, France and the American South. Nothing about the term is reliable without knowing which tradition is speaking.

A moulded chocolate shell with a filling. The modern professional term for what Belgium calls a praline, and the piece that most tests a maker's tempering.

Any chocolate with a distinct centre. Regulated in the EU to the extent that the coating must actually be chocolate and must make up a stated share of the whole.

A centre coated by pouring chocolate over it, rather than by casting a shell around it. The other of the two ways to make a filled piece, and the one that leaves a foot.

Chocolate cast into a shape and allowed to contract out of it. Everything from a bar to a hollow Easter figure, and the technique that makes tempering visible.

Chocolate with gas bubbles set into it. The aeration changes how fast it melts, which changes how the flavour arrives.

Tempered chocolate spread thin, scattered with inclusions and broken up. The most forgiving confection there is, and the best first project.

A disc of tempered chocolate topped with nuts and dried fruit. French, medieval in origin, and the easiest professional-looking confection to make.

A centre built up in successive chocolate layers in a rotating pan. Slow, specialised, and the reason chocolate-covered almonds are perfectly round.

A moulded shell with nothing inside. Technically the most demanding moulding job, because the shell must survive handling and still be pleasant to eat.

Fresh or dried fruit coated in tempered chocolate. With fresh fruit it is a same-day product, and the reason is water.

A cooked-sugar centre in a chocolate shell. Keeps far longer than a ganache, which is why it dominates boxed selections.

A sugar confection with chocolate in it, and one where the texture is controlled by sugar crystal size rather than by the chocolate.

A spooned mound of chocolate and inclusions. Bark in individual portions, and the most forgiving confection there is.

A refrigerated ganache slab cut into dusted cubes. One of the very few confection names anywhere that carries a compositional definition on its home market.

A thick moulded bar filled with pistachio cream and toasted shredded pastry. A trend product with a traceable 2021 origin, not a traditional confection.

A sourcing claim, not a composition or a quality standard. It tells you where the beans came from and nothing about how good they were.

A claim about who did the manufacturing, not about the recipe. The maker roasts, grinds and refines the beans themselves rather than buying finished chocolate.

A sector rather than a specification. Unregulated, unaudited, and useful mainly as a signal of what a maker is trying to do rather than of what they achieved.

A far more precise sourcing claim than single-origin: one named property rather than one country. The precision is the whole value.

One step further than bean-to-bar: the maker grows the cacao as well as manufacturing it. Rare, and mostly found in producing countries.

A claim that the maker buys from growers without intermediaries. Unlike certification schemes it has no standard, no auditor and no mark — it is a description of a relationship.

The overwhelming majority of chocolate made, and the category craft writing defines itself against rather than describes.

Chocolate from beans of more than one origin, combined deliberately. A skill rather than a failure to specify.

Chocolate made in very small quantities, often from a single fermentation lot. Unregulated, and the constraint it describes is real.

The least defined word in the domain. It usually means a chocolatier working by hand — which frequently means remoulding somebody else's chocolate.

A product format covering several different things, which is why substituting one for another so often goes wrong.

A product format spanning two genuinely different drinks: melted chocolate in liquid, and cocoa powder in liquid. They are not versions of the same thing.

The default format, and a nineteenth-century industrial invention rather than an obvious way to eat chocolate.

Cocoa powder pre-blended with sugar, milk powder and dispersing agents. Mostly sugar, and a different product from drinking chocolate.

A soft chocolate-flavoured paste, kept spreadable by vegetable oil and sugar. Descended from gianduja, and generally much further from it than the packaging implies.

A commercial category rather than a product one — and a substantial share of annual chocolate sales concentrated into a few weeks.

Small moulded discs sold for eating rather than for melting — and easily confused with the callets that look identical.

A hollow chocolate sphere filled with cocoa and marshmallow that opens when hot milk is poured over it. A modern format, and a demanding one to make.

Couverture sold as a solid mass rather than as callets. Cheaper per kilogram, harder to melt evenly.

The European term for a moulded bar, and in Mesoamerican usage something quite different — a pressed disc of ground cacao for drinking.

An assortment of filled pieces, and the format where shelf life dictates what can be in it.

A British and Australian shelf category, generally an ordinary sweetened dark chocolate of undistinguished quality sold for the kitchen.

Flat discs of couverture, sold in bulk for melting. Distinct from callets in shape and from buttons in purpose, and the format most professional recipes assume.

Bought-in empty shells for filling. A component rather than a confection, and the single largest shortcut in small-scale chocolate work.