Milk crumb chocolate
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.
What it is
The crumb process cooks milk with sugar and cocoa liquor, then dries the mixture to a solid crumb which is later refined into chocolate. It was developed partly as a preservation method before reliable milk powder existed, and it survived because the flavour it produces became what a large market expects.
That flavour is the point. Cooking generates Maillard products and a slight lactic tang that chocolate made from plain milk powder does not have — cooked, malty, occasionally described as cheesy. Readers who find certain British and Irish milk chocolate distinctive rather than merely sweet are tasting a genuine process difference.
- Category kind
- A composition — this describes what is in the product
- Legal status
- Industry convention, not a legal definition
- Typical range on shelves
- 20–40%
- Also called
- crumb process chocolate
- Flavour families
- caramel, sweet
- Texture
- creamy, melting
What the percentage means here
Total cacao-derived mass, as on any milk chocolate. Crumb-process products are frequently at the lower end, and in the UK and Ireland may use a derogation permitting a lower cocoa floor than the rest of the EU.
How it tastes
Cooked milk, malt and caramel, with a slight tang. Distinctive rather than neutral, and the character is deliberate.
Related
Covered in
- How milk chocolate is madeThe alternative process and its distinctive flavour.
- Chocolate around the worldThe process behind the British flavour signature.
- Choosing milk chocolateThe process behind the British flavour signature.
- Milk ingredients in chocolateThe cooked-crumb route and the flavour it produces.
History and culture
- The development of milk chocolateThe competing British route to the same problem, and why two milk bars at the same percentage taste different.
- British chocolate historyThe process that makes British milk chocolate taste distinct, and the reason a percentage comparison across the Channel misleads.
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)