Vegan chocolate

Plain dark chocolate is cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar and often soya or sunflower lecithin. None of those is animal-derived, so a large proportion of the dark chocolate on any shelf is compositionally vegan without saying a word about it.

What rules a chocolate out is milk in any form — milk solids, milk fat, whey, lactose, butteroil — plus honey, and shellac or similar glazes on panned products. Those are the things to look for, and the ingredient list names all of them.

Mostly the production line. A line that also runs milk chocolate carries cross-contact risk, and a certified vegan mark is an assurance about that as well as about the recipe.

This is why a bar can carry both a vegan mark and a 'may contain milk' warning without contradiction: the first is about ingredients and certification, the second about shared equipment. Which of the two matters to you is a personal or clinical question rather than a factual one.

Chocolate lines run several recipes. A line that made milk chocolate this morning carries residue into whatever runs next, and cleaning between products is a cost that is incurred where it is required rather than by default.

That is the whole of what a certified vegan mark adds beyond the ingredient list: an assurance about the line and the cleaning regime, audited by somebody. It is also why a bar can carry a vegan mark and a may-contain-milk statement at once without contradicting itself — the first is about the recipe and the audit, the second about shared equipment.

For a reader avoiding dairy by choice, the ingredient list settles it. For a reader avoiding it for a diagnosed allergy, neither claim is an allergen assurance, and the meaningful category is a dedicated line.

Replacing dairy is a genuine formulation problem. The replacement — oat, rice, almond, coconut or potato preparations — has to supply sweetness, body and a milky aroma without introducing free water, which would seize the chocolate.

Results vary far more between plant-milk bars than between dairy milk bars, and the differences are large enough that disliking one tells you nothing about the next. Oat tends toward cereal sweetness, coconut toward its own distinct flavour, almond toward a drier body.

They also behave like milk chocolate in the kitchen: softer set, lower working temperature, less snap.