Cocoa bean, paste, and butter

The percentage of cocoa given on a bar indicates a total percentage of cocoa, meaning the products of the cocoa tree. To continue our analogy with olive trees, just as olives can be transformed into tapenade paste, so cocoa beans can be transformed into cocoa paste. Olive trees produce olive oil, and cocoa trees produce fatty matter—cocoa butter. They are equally noble products but their uses are very different. Logically, the richer a chocolate is in cocoa, the more cocoa butter it contains, because a cocoa bean holds 50 to 55 percent cocoa butter.