There’s No Such Thing As Chocolate Flavor

Think you know what chocolate tastes like? Think again.

When researchers analyzed the mouth-watering taste and smell of chocolate, they found no therethere. Instead, they found that the well-known chocolate aroma is a complicated mishmash of other tastes and flavors none of which, individually, smell or taste like chocolate.

“To develop better chocolate, you need to know the chemistry behind the aroma and taste substances in cocoa and other ingredients,” says researcher Peter Schieberle, Ph.D. “That understanding must begin with the flavor substances in the raw cocoa bean, extend through all the processing steps and continue as the consumer eats the chocolate.

“When you put chocolate in your mouth, a chemical reaction happens,” explains Schieberle. “Some people just bite and swallow chocolate. If you do that, the reaction doesn’t have time to happen, and you lose a lot of flavor.”

Because no individual compound was identified bearing the typical aroma of cocoa, the researchers had to pick apart individual aromas and put them back together for taste testers to experience. This is a crucial step toward determining how aroma substances work together to stimulate human odor and taste receptors to finally generate the overall perception of chocolate in the brain.

To create a chocolate aroma, substances with these smells (and others) have to be combined:

• Potato chips
• Cooked meat
• Peaches
• Raw beef fat
• Cooked cabbage
• Human sweat
• Earth
• Cucumber
• Honey