White couverture
The most heat-sensitive of the three and the hardest to temper — high sugar, high milk solids and no cocoa solids at all.
What it is
White couverture carries the highest sugar and milk-solid load of the three grades and no cocoa solids, which makes it both the most scorch-prone and the trickiest to temper. Working temperature is around 29 to 30°C, the coolest of the three.
It is also where cocoa butter quality shows most, because there is nothing else to taste. A white couverture made with deodorised butter is a technical material rather than a flavour one.
- Category kind
- A manufacturing grade — this describes how it behaves, not what it is
- Legal status
- Legally defined, and defined differently by jurisdiction
- Typical range on shelves
- 31–40%
- Flavour families
- sweet, caramel
- Texture
- creamy, waxy
What the percentage means here
Refers to cocoa butter alone, since white chocolate contains no cocoa solids.
Legal minimums
These differ by jurisdiction, and the difference is real rather than technical: the same words on a wrapper describe different products either side of the Atlantic.
| Jurisdiction | Component | Minimum | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|
| European Union | cocoa butter, as white chocolate | 20% | Directive 2000/36/EC |
- European Union: The directive attaches its couverture requirement to chocolate and to milk chocolate. It defines no white couverture, so the only EU figure that applies is the 20% cocoa butter required of any white chocolate; 'white couverture' is a trade description there. Corrected on 8 October 2026 against the consolidated text; this row previously stated a 31% cocoa butter minimum that the directive does not set for white chocolate.
Working with it
Melt to no more than 45°C. Temper to 29–30°C. Seizes and scorches more readily than either of the others.
Related
Flavours it tends toward
Techniques that work with this
- Moulding chocolateCasting tempered chocolate into a mould and letting it contract out. Mould release is the honest test of whether the tempering worked.
- Melting for temperingThe first stage of tempering rather than a technique of its own, and it has a requirement ordinary melting does not: every crystal must go.
- Tempering by seedingThe reliable home method: melt most of it, stir in the rest, and let the solid chocolate's existing crystals template the melt.
- Tempering white chocolateThe lowest temperatures of the three and the least forgiving, because there are no cocoa solids to buffer the sugar and milk.
- 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.
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