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Scientists Develop Chocolate That Won't Melt At High Temperatures

Zothecula writes "One of life's less pleasant surprises is discovering the chocolate bar that you forgot you had in your pocket on a hot day. Two scientists working at Cadbury's research and development plant in Bourneville, U.K., are fighting that gooey surprise with the invention of chocolate that remains solid even when exposed to temperatures of 40 C (104 F) for more than three hours. Aimed at tropical markets, the 'temperature tolerant chocolate' is described in a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) patent application."

15 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:New slogan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except that it wouldn't melt in your mouth and thus probably also be less delicious than normal chocolate.

  2. Feature not Bug! by tempmpi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly: chocolate melting almost exactly at body temperature is a feature not a bug.

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    Jan
    1. Re:Feature not Bug! by aurispector · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not to mention that we developed anti-melting chocolate technology during WW2 called "M&Ms".

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    2. Re:Feature not Bug! by rwise2112 · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's actually stolen technology: Smarties

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      "For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
    3. Re:Feature not Bug! by Meneth · · Score: 4, Funny

      Copied, not stolen.

  3. Obligatory Warning by Cruciform · · Score: 5, Funny

    If your chocolate bar remains hard for more than four hours, please see a confectioner.

  4. Re:New slogan by timeOday · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except that it wouldn't melt in your mouth and thus probably also be less delicious than normal chocolate.

    RTA:

    The problem was that making a chocolate bar that wouldn't melt wasn't hard. What was hard was to make one that people still wanted to eat. The military bars didn't melt and they were nutritious, but they were difficult to eat and they didn't taste very good. Thatâ(TM)s because the usual way to keep chocolate from melting was to either add fillers like oat flour and swap the cocoa butter for other fats, which made it taste like a candle, or adding water or glycerol to encourage sugar crystal formation, which made it gritty. Cadbury's approach is...

    Well, I won't spoil it for you.

  5. Re:1st Iraq war???? by vlm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You'd have found it was just a remake of the WWII era tropical bars. I ate a couple (of the modern remakes, I was in .mil in the 90s). It was icky.

    You know how cheap american chocolate (Hersheys) is like room temperature brown colored Crisco? The tropical stuff was basically the same stuff but a texture / mouth feel more like refrigerated brown Crisco.

    I imagine this "invention" is about the 4th generation re-invention. Food science is just like IT, every decade or two, the same old ideas get lipstick and a new dress on the old pig and a big announcement about the new baby, while the old timers roll their eyes, not that crap again....

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  6. Shatters when cold by docilespelunker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Taking chocolate to the other extreme, dunking it in liquid nitrogen makes it shatter. I learnt a lesson that should not be repeated... Don't eat cryo cooled chocolate. When it shatters in your mouth it's like having a mouth full of cold knives. However after a while and some whimpering it did melt - so hurrah for melty chocolate!

  7. Re:New slogan by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Informative

    You got it' It's why others that invented it years ago did not market it. It change the taste and mouth feel of chocolate. Test groups did not like it.

    This is not a new invention, Back in 2009 another company already announced it.

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2540765/Scientists-develop-new-type-of-chocolate-which-does-not-melt-in-the-mouth.html

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  8. Re:New slogan by NatasRevol · · Score: 5, Informative

    I worked with/on Hershey's Desert Bar. In 1990.

    http://www.hersheyarchives.org/essay/details.aspx?EssayId=39
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonliebigstuff/7290674224/

    It was processing the egg whites to withstand structural changes at higher temps.

    I put one in a flame on a gas stove. It burned, did not melt.

    They were tolerable to eat, but not great. Much like last year's halloween candy.

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  9. this is clearly false by Chirs · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you look at a Hershey chocolate bar, it does in fact have "chocolate" listed in the ingredient list, which is by definition made from cacao.

  10. Re:New slogan by bhartman34 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think you're missing an important point of physics: If it won't melt at 104F, it won't melt at 98.6F, either, which is the problem. :)

  11. Re:New slogan by cellocgw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My wet-blanket reply of the day follows.
    The primary mechanism for chocolate breakup in your mouth is dissolving (and some early enzymatic breakup), not melting. If you really waited around for even soft chocolates to melt at 37-ish degrees Celsius, you would not have a good time.
    What would matter to the consumers of this new chocolate,then, would be its texture and dissolution rate, not its melting temperature.

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  12. Re:New slogan by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    My preference is Theo or Kalila 85% +

    Just in case you need to know, Ghirardelli is still good, Droste is still good, Lindt is now shit. This is relevant if you're looking for gourmet chocolate in a supermarket.

    --
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