Chocolates

The quality of chocolate used in cookery should, like wine, be at least of the quality you would eat or drink. The key to quality lies in the figure given on the packaging for the percentage of cocoa mass or solids. Briefly, the higher the percentage the better. The more cocoa mass, the less fat, sugar and other ingredients. If a chocolate bar contains 35 per cent cocoa solids, one might ask what makes up the other 65 per cent. The very best chocolate I have ever tasted contains 80 per cent cocoa solids, leaving a lower percentage to be made up with other ingredients. If you have never tasted a grand cru chocolate, be prepared for a revelation comparable to that of tasting a grand cru wine against a lesser wine. It is made with the same care, blending the criollo bean from South America and Indonesia, with its fine, fruity perfumed characteristic, and the robust forastero bean from Africa, which adds weight and strength. Good chocolate breaks with a crisp, dry snap. It melts in the mouth with a fine, smooth texture, soft and light without being fatty and cloying. Like good wine, it has a long finish, its fine subtle flavours lingering. It contains small amounts of caffeine, and theobromine which induce a feeling of well-being, comforting at the same time as being stimulating.