Chocolate ingredients, formulations and labelling
This domain tests the ingredient logic and the regulation behind a label: what the percentage means, what may legally be called chocolate, and how formulation changes texture and flavour.
Core ingredients
Cocoa mass brings solids, butter and flavour. Cocoa butter brings fat and melt. Sugar gives sweetness, body and snap. Milk powder adds lactose, milk proteins and fat, and milk fat softens the cocoa butter crystal structure. Lecithin (E322, typically 0.3-0.5%) lowers viscosity by coating particles; PGPR (E476, up to 0.5%) lowers yield value further, mainly in moulded and enrobed products. Vanillin is a permitted flavouring, not automatically a defect, but it masks origin character.
The percentage claim
The large number is total cocoa solids: cocoa butter plus non-fat cocoa solids, not cocoa mass alone. A 70% bar with 35% cocoa butter has only about 35% non-fat solids, which is why two 70% bars can taste and melt completely differently.
Legal minima
In the EU, dark chocolate needs at least 35% total dry cocoa solids, 18% cocoa butter and 14% dry non-fat cocoa solids. Milk chocolate needs 25% cocoa solids, 14% dry milk solids, 2.5% non-fat cocoa solids and 3.5% milk fat. White chocolate needs 20% cocoa butter, 14% milk solids and 3.5% milk fat. US standards differ: milk chocolate requires 10% chocolate liquor, 12% milk solids and 3.5% milk fat; white requires 20% cocoa butter. Compound coatings and chocolate-flavoured products replace cocoa butter with vegetable fat and may not be sold as chocolate in the EU.
Worked example. A bar lists 60% cocoa, sugar first, cocoa butter second, milk powder third, and tastes soft and sweet. The percentage can legally be 60% while including a large butter fraction and little non-fat solids, with milk fat softening the snap. Ask for the solids/butter split, not just the number.
Traps. Reading the percentage as non-fat cocoa solids; equating a higher percentage with better quality; ignoring ingredient order; overlooking allergen labelling for milk, soya lecithin and nuts.