Cocoa butter

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.

An ingredient form — this is a component rather than a finished product

What it is

Cocoa butter is roughly half the weight of a cacao bean, and it is the component that gives chocolate almost all of its physical character. Its melting range sits just below human body temperature, which is an unusual property in a natural fat and the reason chocolate behaves as it does in the mouth.

It is also polymorphic: it can crystallise in six distinct forms, only one of which gives the snap, gloss, contraction and clean melt that chocolate needs. Every word written about tempering in this catalogue is ultimately about controlling which of those six forms a given batch sets in.

Sold separately, it is used to thin chocolate for coating, to enrich white chocolate, and — deodorised — in cosmetics. Deodorised cocoa butter has had its aromatics stripped, which is why much white chocolate tastes of very little.

Category kind: An ingredient form — this is a component rather than a finished product
Legal status: Industry convention, not a legal definition
Flavour families: floral, sweet
Texture: melting, waxy

What the percentage means here

Not applicable. Cocoa butter is a single component rather than a mixture, so it carries no cacao percentage. Where a chocolate's specification quotes a cocoa butter figure, that is a statement about the chocolate rather than about the butter.

Working with it

Added to chocolate to lower its viscosity for coating and moulding — the whole basis of couverture. A little goes a long way, and adding it dilutes the cocoa solids that carry flavour.

Commonly misunderstood

That cocoa butter is a fat added to chocolate from elsewhere. It came out of the same bean as the solids; a bar with extra cocoa butter has had more of one part of the bean added back.

How it is regulated

The EU instrument defines cocoa butter by what it must be rather than by how much of something it must contain: it specifies the fat's origin and sets limits on free fatty acid content and unsaponifiable matter. That is a purity standard rather than a compositional minimum, which is why this record carries no minimum table.

Deodorised and non-deodorised

Cocoa butter carries aroma from the beans it came from. Deodorising strips it, which produces a neutral fat that will not interfere with whatever it is added to — useful in cosmetics and in white chocolate a manufacturer wants to taste only of milk and sugar. Non-deodorised cocoa butter retains a faint fresh-dairy, slightly floral character, and it is the difference between a white chocolate that tastes of something and one that does not.

Defined by

PressingThe surplus cocoa butter that pressing produced is what made the moulded eating bar possible in the first place.

Covered in

Why chocolate meltsThe fat whose properties this guide is about.
White chocolate explainedThe ingredient that makes white chocolate a cacao product, and the deodorising question.
Cocoa butter crystal formsThe fat whose crystal behaviour this is.
What cocoa butter doesThe ingredient itself.
Lecithin in chocolateThe expensive ingredient lecithin partly substitutes for.
What the percentage hidesThe half of the percentage that carries almost no flavour.
Why melted chocolate is too thickThe correct thinning agent, and why the alternatives break temper.
Cocoa butter vs chocolateThe ingredient itself.
Cacao butter vs cocoa butterThe ingredient itself.
Fats in chocolateThe fat itself and its crystal forms.
Cocoa butter beyond chocolateThe fat itself, its grades and its melting behaviour.

Compared in

Cocoa butter vs cocoa butter equivalentsSet against Cocoa butter equivalents, with the practical consequence of each difference.

Techniques that work with this

Melted chocolate is too thickUsually over-crystallisation or the wrong material — and the one thing not to do is add water.
Infusing flavour into chocolateGetting flavour in without getting water in. Infuse the cream, use oil-based flavourings, or steep into the fat.
Working with coloured cocoa butterThe source of every mirror-finish coloured bonbon. It is tempered cocoa butter, and it fails for the same reasons chocolate does.
Velvet spray finishThe suede texture on a professional entremet. It is chocolate and cocoa butter sprayed onto something frozen, and it needs equipment a home kitchen does not have.
Tempering without seed chocolateTwo routes when there is no tempered chocolate to seed with: table it on a cold surface, or use cocoa butter powder as the seed instead.

History and culture

Cacao in IndonesiaThe product this crop has mostly been bought for, and the reason flavour precursors were not priced.

Sources

ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
Directive 2000/36/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council relating to cocoa and chocolate products intended for human consumption — European Parliament and Council of the European Union, 2000(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
The Science of Chocolate — Royal Society of Chemistry(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)