Cadbury

oldbazza

Sunday evening me and the better half shared a lovely Green and Blacks mint and dark chocolate bar(big pile of them was reduced in Sainsbury's)washed down with a mug of Green and Blacks cocoa,absolute bliss.

VTech

Chocolate is like tea. So many options and as we all have different tastes, we all prefer different bars.
Belgian seems to be amongst the best. Also swiss and quality depends on the smoothness of the bean after grinding and before processing into cocoa.
It's an art to make chocolate and a lot of people would suggest machines can't make the highest quality ??

Giraffoto

Cadbury's Dairy Milk tastes different from Milka and Lindt milk chocolate, but I wouldn't say it's not chocolate - a matter of taste is more like it. Hershey chocolate does have a matter of a very strange after taste, though.

VTech

Giraffoto wrote:

Cadbury's Dairy Milk tastes different from Milka and Lindt milk chocolate, but I wouldn't say it's not chocolate - a matter of taste is more like it. Hershey chocolate does have a matter of a very strange after taste, though.

From what I remember, to be true chocolate you need a certain amount of cocoa, cadburys use mainly hydrogenated ingredients and far less cocoa ?

kingofthetailwind

Green & Blacks 85% is my favourite. But also love Cadbury! And white chocolate, which isn't really chocolate at all. I think the cocoa content of Cadburys has reduced since Kraft bought it. Anyone tried Lindt 99%?

capt_slog

I was told once that Hersheys (or American chocolate in general) tastes like it does because they use milk that has 'gone off' slightly, or soured.

The story goes that when they first made it, the milk had travelled a long way by rail to get to the factory and was soured when it got there. They made the chocolate anyway and one can only assume that people bought it because there was nothing else. But they got into the habit of thinking that's how it should taste and so it's been made that way ever since.

I don't know if the train story is true, but the soured milk part of it certainly seems to be.

Either way, it tastes like shite.

Giraffoto

KingOfTheTailwind wrote:

Anyone tried Lindt 99%?

Yes. Very, very bitter, something that you nibble with a drink rather than shoving down your cakehole (which is the correct technique for other sorts of chocolate)

adamfo

VTech wrote:

Cadburys don't make chocolate.
They went through a legal battle and had to change the name of their most famous bar.

It's Vegalate not chocolate because there is to much cheap vegetable oil in it and not enough cocoa butter oil.
Milka went the same way when the American junk food company Kraft took over.

VTech

I think we also have to remember that this is the same with most foods and also different regions of the world.
If you like a coke in the UK don't expect it to taste the same in the USA or in the UAE.
USA use corn syrup to sweeten, I'm not sure what the arabs use and we use saccharin's.
I find it odd how different the same products taste as you eat in different countries.

briantrumpet

I've been to two chocolate factories on tours: Cailler in Switzerland, and Cadbury in Bournville. The first was 8.50 euros, was well put together, and included an all-you-can eat tasting room of high quality chocolates; the second involved a tacky guided tour, three small bars of stuff using Dairy Milk (including a Curly Wurly, and yes, they are MUCH smaller than they used to be), and a couple of tastes of melted chocolate, all for £11.50. I could have saved myself the bother and bought the chocolate for about £2. Summed up the difference between Cadbury's 'chocolate' and good chocolate. That's not to say I never eat Cadbury's, but its just a sugar fix, and I always feel guilty afterwards.

Incidentally, does anyone remember Terry's Bitter Chocolate? A 70%er, and rather fine, still being handmade in an era of mass production - one of the early casualties of the takeover by Kraft.

ugo.santalucia

briantrumpet wrote:

That's not to say I never eat Cadbury's, but its just a sugar fix, and I always feel guilty afterwards.

That's exactly how I felt... as if I had eaten something really wrong

briantrumpet

ugo.santalucia wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

That's not to say I never eat Cadbury's, but its just a sugar fix, and I always feel guilty afterwards.

That's exactly how I felt... as if I had eaten something really wrong

Dogs returning to their own vomit....

bompington

The funny thing is, if you go and visit colonials and exiles - the one thing they ask you to bring is always Cadbury's.

ugo.santalucia

bompington wrote:

The funny thing is, if you go and visit colonials and exiles - the one thing they ask you to bring is always Cadbury's.

Typical... usually Italians abroad crave for "mulino bianco" biscuits and packaged cakes... which are glorified junk... I don't of course... 8)

ugo.santalucia

Ferrero in Italy is the equivalent of Cadbury in the UK, but boy the difference between Nutella and that junk I had yesterday!

briantrumpet

bompington wrote:

The funny thing is, if you go and visit colonials and exiles - the one thing they ask you to bring is always Cadbury's.

If I emigrated, it's one of the things I'd be glad not too see again, or taste. I'd emigrate to avoid the junk that we seem addicted to. Oh, and I'd emigrate for better weather too.

Mccaria

The taste of Dairy Milk in India is very different from the UK. Essentially limited refrigeration and hot climates means it is made to a different recipe so that it is less likely to melt and if it does start to melt it does not reform to that horrible whitish granular substance which happens to UK chocolate when it melts and reforms. Hence why Indian based friends and family request UK Dairy Milk when we visit.

Of course the UK love of vegetable fat bars vs the continental preference for cocoa bars was one of the defining battles of the EU (at least before the single currency slightly shaded it)

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jan/17/foodanddrink

Pross

Just finished a Snickers Duo, my first chocolate bar in a couple of weeks, and thoroughly enjoyed it. You can all keep your chocolate snobbery and '85%' rubbish you bunch of Guardian readers

adamfo

I've just come back from Sainbury's. This thread gave me a craving. They have a good choice of dark chocolate with their own brand label. I've got a Peruvian Andean bean one made in France and a 85% Cocoa from Ghana made in Germany. Both taste very different. That's the thing about the UK; plenty of choice.

robbo2011

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Basically I don't get why a UK company has to produce something so sub-standard, when the nation spends so much in advertising the quality of its dairy produce and keeps going on about what kids should be eating.

Because when it comes to chocolate (or many other things come to think of it) British people on the whole have no clue about quality.

smidsy

Cadbury was all good - then the Americans bought it...The End.

Paulie W

robbo2011 wrote:

Because when it comes to chocolate (or many other things come to think of it) British people on the whole have no clue about quality.

British taste in food has changed dramatically over the last 10-15 years. In most supermarkets, even small ones, there is normally a wide range of choice in chocolate alongside Cadburys stuff, much of it high in cocoa solids. The same is true of coffee, tea, cheese and any number of other foods.

I think it has to be said in response to Robbo that British tastes until recently have been heavily influenced by the ongoing impact of rationing during and after WWII. My parents have a very limited and parochial palate reflecting the food they were brought up on - this fed through to me as I was brought up on meat and two veg (badly cooked) and pretty bland food in general, something I ended up rebelling against. My dad also talks a lot about the end of sweet rationing: a whole generation deprived of sugar responded when it came to an end by gorging on the sweetest things they could get their hands on. I may be overstating this but the British taste for super sweet candy can be linked to this.

ugo.santalucia

I think Paulie W makes a very valid point

adamfo

robbo2011 wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Basically I don't get why a UK company has to produce something so sub-standard, when the nation spends so much in advertising the quality of its dairy produce and keeps going on about what kids should be eating.

Because when it comes to chocolate (or many other things come to think of it) British people on the whole have no clue about quality.

The stats suggest otherwise. For example, the UK is Germany's second biggest export market. Assuming of course you accept Germany makes good things.

pipipi

The wartime/rationing thing is interesting.

So the body naturally craves sugar? So when it was rationed people didn't get enough, and when rationing stopped people tried to get as much sweetness as possible and so amounts of sugar in chocolate went up?

That kinda makes sense. But then what kind of chocolate do they make in countries where sugar has never been rationed. Surely, if the body craves sugar, the chocolate there should have loads of sugar in too?

Or is just the rationing that made people crave sugar? Ok, but shouldn't France and Germany also crave sugar?

I'm not trying to argue but whilst it initially made sense, something doesn't quite work in my mind. What am I missing?

nathancom

I got given a couple of bars of valrhona this xmas, finally enjoying them now in the evening with a drop of whisky.

Mccaria

Just to show I am totally immune to peer suggestions, went to Sainsbury today and ended up buying 6 different brands of 70% chocolate to do a taste test.

Fortunately I have a pack of Cadbury mini eggs in the fridge just in case none of them work.

Yellow Peril

Google the "Chocolate Directive", it will give you an insight into the EC law on all of this.

Paulie W

pipipi wrote:

The wartime/rationing thing is interesting.

So the body naturally craves sugar? So when it was rationed people didn't get enough, and when rationing stopped people tried to get as much sweetness as possible and so amounts of sugar in chocolate went up?

That kinda makes sense. But then what kind of chocolate do they make in countries where sugar has never been rationed. Surely, if the body craves sugar, the chocolate there should have loads of sugar in too?

Or is just the rationing that made people crave sugar? Ok, but shouldn't France and Germany also crave sugar?

I'm not trying to argue but whilst it initially made sense, something doesn't quite work in my mind. What am I missing?

I dont think it's about the body but the mind craving what it cant have.

verylonglegs

Paulie W wrote:

robbo2011 wrote:

Because when it comes to chocolate (or many other things come to think of it) British people on the whole have no clue about quality.

British taste in food has changed dramatically over the last 10-15 years. In most supermarkets, even small ones, there is normally a wide range of choice in chocolate alongside Cadburys stuff, much of it high in cocoa solids. The same is true of coffee, tea, cheese and any number of other foods.

I think it has to be said in response to Robbo that British tastes until recently have been heavily influenced by the ongoing impact of rationing during and after WWII. My parents have a very limited and parochial palate reflecting the food they were brought up on - this fed through to me as I was brought up on meat and two veg (badly cooked) and pretty bland food in general, something I ended up rebelling against. My dad also talks a lot about the end of sweet rationing: a whole generation deprived of sugar responded when it came to an end by gorging on the sweetest things they could get their hands on. I may be overstating this but the British taste for super sweet candy can be linked to this.

Seems a fair observation but I would add that while some have migrated from meat and veg to better/more varied things there are many who unfortunately have moved on to the microwave and awful processed foods.