Oh, cacao percentage, what is your purpose?
It's not surprising that Big Chocolate doesn't want you to know what proportion of cacao solids (also known as mass or powder), cacao butter, non-cacao fats like palm oil, sugar, and milk are in your Hershey's Kisses or Snickers. You'd be stunned how little cacao - 11% in Hershey's standard milk chocolate - and how much sugar, milk, and junky things they contain.
It is surprising that Small Chocolate hasn't promoted a standard nomenclature more informative than "70% dark", "70% cacao", "70%", etc; as even a moderately experienced chocolate taster could tell you, five 70% bars made from similar beans may have five totally different flavor profiles and textures. We owe this ambiguity to the aggregation of cacao mass and cacao butter, the two components of the cacao bean, into a single % cacao figure, where, ideally, they would be separated. 70% dark chocolate contains 70% cacao and 30% sugar, that's for sure; what's for unsure is whether it contains additional cacao butter on top of what the refined beans naturally contain. Clarifying example: in theory, three 70% dark bars could contain 35% of both cacao mass and cacao butter, 50% mass and 20% butter, or 20% mass and 50% butter.
In practice, disaggregating mass and butter is tricky, as craft makers refine chocolate from whole beans, the relative butteriness of which can vary. If your chocolate bar were made by combining cacao powder and butter, a precise butter:mass ratio would be easy to obtain; as it is, a maker could state the proportion of added butter, ranging from zero, i.e. chocolate made only from ground beans and sugar, to roughly 20-40%.
Taste, Texture, and added butter
Why should you care about added butter? Because it influences a bar's taste and texture. The breakdown:
• High mass:butter ratio, i.e. no added butter yields stronger flavors, albeit not necessarily the rich, quintessentially "chocolate-y" ones, with a dense texture and slow melt.
• Balanced mass:butter ratio, i.e. 5-15% added butter brings moderately intense flavors, a lighter texture, and a quick melt.
• Low mass:butter ratio, i.e. 15-40% added butter delivers mild flavors, a creamy texture somewhat reminiscent of milk chocolate, and a very quick melt.
What about Milk and white chocolates?
The Siamaya Masala Chai Milk bar pictured above - an excellent bar from an excellent maker!! - doesn't offer a cacao percentage, perhaps because milk chocolate bars tend to be less than 50% cacao and more than 50% milk/sugar. Would consumers be concerned to know that their favorite chocolate bar is, say, 38% cacao and 62% milk/sugar? They might be. Hence the notable trend to market dark chocolate, and cacao nibs, as a healthy "superfood". And if you're concerned about added sugar, then switching from a milk bar to a 85% dark bar will help you cut down significantly.
White chocolate is straightforward: it's white because the cacao content is 100% butter with 0% mass/solids. As per the photo above, cocoa butter, like most fats, is somewhere between off-white and yellow. Critically, white chocolate is also milk chocolate, usually containing somewhere between 25-40% milk powder, 30-40% cocoa butter, and 30-45% sugar.
Is Cacao percentage really that important?
Yes. And no. A 100% bar is, by definition, 100% cacao and 0% milk/sugar: no matter the mass:butter ratio, it will be a potent experience, one that many people love and that you can cultivate an appreciation for over time! We always try makers' 100% dark bars when we can, as they are a clear, if sometimes overwhelming, expression of the bean, roast, and conche. At the other end of the spectrum, hello Hershey's original milk, coming in hot with 11% cacao; we love Hershey's Kisses as much as any non-psychopath, but we may well speak for the artisan chocolate movement by suggesting that the FDA raise the minimum cacao content of products labeled "chocolate" from 10% to, say, 30%, thereby distinguishing between chocolate and, let's be frank, chocolate-flavored candy.
Speaking of roasting and conching, check out these three bars from Fresco out of Lynden, WA, about 45 minutes north of us. Same bean, same percentage, but three roasts and three conches. And what of mass:butter ratio?? A taste test is in order.
The exposed chocolates in the same light, medium, dark order as above are nearly indistinguishable.
The votes are in, not just Austin's and mine, but those of one of our committed taste testers, Ece: light roast reigns supreme, dark roast takes home silver, and medium roast is just... meh. Central American beans are often highly floral and fruity: of the three roast/conche combos, the light brings forward the most complex berry and citrus flavors without sacrificing the earthy "chocolate-y-ness" that a stronger roast would yield. The dark roast was a bit richer with stronger caramel action, which is great, but it lacked the tropical zest of the light roast. The medium? A less distinguished middle ground, although in fairness to Fresco, they set a very high bar for themselves, and as their packaging suggests, said medium impressed the Academy of Chocolate judges, who preferred it to the light and dark in both 2021 and 2022. As I've always said, taste is on the tongue of the taster! Still working on that one...