Chocolate formulation calculator

Turn a chocolate recipe in grams into percentages, composition and a comparison with the legal minimums in nine jurisdictions.

The recipe, in gramsCocoa mass (liquor)Added cocoa butterCocoa powderSugarWhole milk powderSkimmed milk powderAnhydrous milk fat (butter oil)LecithinPGPRAnything else

What is in your ingredients, as percentages

Replace these with the figures on your suppliers’ specification sheets. Until you do, the results below are also given as a range covering everything the Codex standards allow each ingredient to contain.

Cocoa butter in the cocoa mass47–60% is permitted (Codex CXS 141-1983, section 3.1). The starting figure is the middle of that range, not a typical value.Cocoa butter in the cocoa powderVaries widely. 20% is where EU law divides cocoa powder from fat-reduced cocoa.Milk fat in the whole milk powderAt least 26% and under 42% (Codex CXS 207-1999, section 3.2). The starting figure is the minimum.Milk fat in the skimmed milk powderNo more than 1.5% (Codex CXS 207-1999, section 3.2). Counted as none unless you enter a figure.Water in the milk powdersNo more than 5% (Codex CXS 207-1999, section 3.2). The starting figure is that maximum.

Enter the weight of at least one ingredient to see what the recipe adds up to.

What this cannot tell you

It is not a compliance check and not legal advice. It compares numbers with the minimums in texts read on a stated date. It does not check permitted ingredients, vegetable fats, additives limits, labelling, or how a particular authority treats moisture, and a standard may have changed since it was read.
The cocoa percentage is exact. Everything that depends on the fat in the cocoa mass or the milk powder is only as good as the figure entered, and without a specification sheet it is a range, sometimes a wide one.
Cocoa ingredients are treated as dry. A per cent or two of moisture in cocoa mass or powder lowers the true dry cocoa figures slightly.
Rules written in other terms are not converted. The United States standards are in chocolate liquor, Australia and New Zealand's in cocoa bean derivatives, and Japan's allow a milk-solids substitution; each is quoted and left unchecked.
It says nothing about whether the chocolate will flow, temper, mould or taste as intended. Two recipes with identical figures here can behave differently, because particle size, moisture and emulsifier matter and are not in the arithmetic.
Inclusions such as nuts or fruit should be left out. The standards set their minimums on the chocolate, and the 'anything else' line is counted as none of cocoa, milk or fat.

Why the same cocoa percentage can hide very different chocolates

The percentage on a label adds cocoa mass and cocoa butter together. A 70% bar can be 70 parts cocoa mass, or 50 of mass and 20 of added butter, and the two differ in how much fat they hold and how much of the bitter, fat-free part of the bean. Cocoa mass itself is not fixed: the Codex standard allows it to be anywhere from 47% to 60% cocoa butter. That is why this calculator reports a range until you tell it what your mass contains.

More in what the percentage does not tell you and lecithin in chocolate. What fat, particle size and emulsifier each do to flow has been measured: the science of making chocolate.

Where the numbers come from

Cocoa butter in cocoa mass, 47–60%: Codex CXS 141-1983, section 3.1.
Milk fat in whole milk powder, at least 26% and under 42%; in skimmed, at most 1.5%; water in either, at most 5%: Codex CXS 207-1999, section 3.2.
Milk fat in anhydrous milk fat, at least 99.8%: Codex CXS 280-1973, section 3.3.
The legal minimums are those in what legally counts as chocolate, each read in its official text on 8 October 2026, with the clause shown beside every result.

Codex standards are recommendations, not law, and are used here only as the outer limits of what an ingredient sold under that name may contain. Related tools: cocoa percentage blender and batch cost calculator.

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