Chocolate Goes Industrial

19th Century 

The 19th century Industrial Revolution saw technological advances that changed the shape of chocolate, literally. The very first chocolate bars were born, as were the cream-filled bon-bons found in heart-shaped gift boxes today. Powdered cocoa became a household staple, and chocolate desserts became standard.

The Big Breakthrough: Chocolate Goes Dutch

One of the problems in preparing chocolate was the cocoa butter that rose to the top and had to be skimmed or boiled off. In 1815, a Dutch chemist named Conrad Van Houten started searching for a better way to remove cocoa butter and make a powdered chocolate. In 1828, he patented a process that forever changed chocolate production. His hydraulic press, now known as the cocoa press, separated the cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor.  What remained was a cocoa powder that retained all the original nutrients of the bean. 

He then went a step further. He added alkali to the powder to make it easier to mix. This gave the powder a darker appearance, but also lent it a milder, less-intense flavor. The process was known as “Dutching”.

Cocoa powder could now be combined with water to make a chocolate beverage that didn’t need complicated mixing or frothing. It could be boxed and sold easily, paving the way for chocolate to be produced on a mass scale. Chocolate was no longer just for the rich. It could be a treat for everyone.

The Quaker Way: Inventing the Chocolate Bar

The Quakers had a relationship with the cacao bean that went back a long way. They were limited in their career choices because of their religious and moral belief system, but medical professions, such as doctor and apothecary, were open to them. Chocolate, with its perceived health benefits, was a major ingredient in their bag of remedies  It’s no surprise, then, that some of the first chocolate industrialists were Quakers. 

The Frys of Bristol were one such family of English Quakers that had produced multiple generations of chocolate makers, dating from the middle of the 18th Century. In 1847 Joseph Fry found a way to separate and then blend powdered cocoa with cocoa butter (plus sugar, of course) and make a paste that could be easily molded into a bar. Up until this time, the powder had been mixed with water, which made it thick and hard to work with. Fry discovered that by mixing extra cocoa butter with the cocoa paste you could make chocolate a portable, solid food.

Fry called these new, somewhat crude chocolate bars, “Chocolat Dèlicieux à Manger,” using a French name to give it style.  All bars previously had to be dissolved in milk or water. This was the very first bar you could eat without cooking or treating. It caught on immediately.  Fry quickly became the largest chocolate manufacturer in the world.

The Swiss Step In

One reason Switzerland is so famous for its chocolate is because it was the birthplace of key inventions that perfected chocolate production. .

Philippe Suchard is responsible for the mélangeur, the first chocolate mixing machine that did the tough job of combining the cocoa paste and sugar into an even blend.

Chemist Henri Nestlé invented a process to create powdered milk through evaporation. He teamed up with Daniel Peter, a chocolate manufacturer, who combined the powdered milk with chocolate to create the very first milk chocolate bar in 1879.

The same year,  Rudolphe Lindt invented the conche machine and the process known as conching a refining step which is critical to making shiny, smooth and creamy chocolate without any graininess. Legend has it that Lindt discovered conching by accident when one of his employees left a machine running all night.

These advances put the Swiss in the forefront of chocolate manufacturing, and throughout the 19th century they produced the equivalent of 12,000 pounds per Swiss citizen per year, most of it for export.

Detecting Pure Chocolate

The early 19th century had no government-regulated food laws. As a result, many foods, including chocolate, were hard to find in a “pure” form, without additives and fillers. Cocoa powder and cocoa butter were expensive and some devious chocolate makers found many ways to cheat their customers by adding other ingredients, such as rice, wheat, barley flour or potato starch. Even cacao shells and ground brick were mixed in. Recipes to identify pure, unadulterated chocolate began springing up. An English health commission in 1850 found over 50% of chocolate samples tested had color added from ground bricks, not to mention the presence of arrowroot and other grains. The British Food and Drug Act was passed in 1860, partially as a result of these findings.

A Uniquely Italian Treat: Gianduja

Turin was famous for its chocolate.  When the Napoleonic Wars made cacao beans hard to get people came up with an alternate plan: add ground hazelnuts to make supply last. The treat that resulted caught on: a tube-shaped sweet mixture of sugar, dark chocolate and hazelnut paste, called givu, Italian for “stub.” Later it was fashioned into a mask for the Piedmont carnival, and that’s how it got the name “little mask,” or giandujotta. Today Gianduja remains popular in Europe and is gaining a fan base in the U.S.A.