Chocolate is made from the fruit of the cacao tree, a fruit that is called a pod, and the cacao beans grow inside the pod, wrapped in a juicy white pulp. A fresh cocoa bean, taken straight from the pod, tastes very bitter and harsh, and it is not good to eat until it has been fermented, dried and roasted. Cocoa beans are fermented before they are dried, because yeasts and bacteria feed on the sweet pulp around the beans, and the beans themselves are changed by the heat and acid that these microbes make. Inside an intact pod there are no microbes at all, so the germs that ferment cocoa must come from the surroundings, arriving from the outside of the pod, from workers' hands, from insects or from the air once the pod is opened.
Fermentation proceeds in two distinct phases. In the first phase there is no oxygen, which makes it anaerobic, and yeasts turn the sugar in the pulp into alcohol; in the second phase there is air, which makes it aerobic, and bacteria turn that alcohol into acids. Breaking down the alcohol gives off heat, and the heat comes from the work of tiny living things in the pulp, so the cocoa beans warm to about 45 to 50 degrees Celsius (113 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit). This heat, together with the acid, kills the bean's embryo. Beans are turned during fermentation, usually around 48 and 72 hours in, so that air gets in and the fermentation is more even across the whole pile, and the entire process lasts about six days, ending when the beans turn brown.
Enzymes inside the bean work during fermentation to break down proteins and carbohydrates, and the result is a collection of flavor chemicals, which is why unfermented beans lack real chocolate taste. The proteins are broken into peptides and amino acids, and these become flavor ingredients that turn into aromas when the beans are roasted, which also gives them the rich flavor we know as chocolate. Some chocolate makers say that without fermentation cacao would have no flavor at all, because fermenting makes aroma precursors, chemicals that roasting later transforms into aromas. Fermenting also turns the sticky pulp to liquid, which drains away and helps the beans dry, and any pulp that is left is stripped off before the beans are dried.
Roasting makes the shells of the beans loosen, so that the shells can be removed, and what is left is the nib, the meat of the bean, which is what chocolate is made from. The nibs are then ground into a thick paste called cocoa liquor, which has no alcohol in it despite the name. Machines called refiners roll that liquor until it is extremely fine, and the aim is particles of approximately 0.001 inch, or 0.00254 centimeters, in size. A gauge called a Grind-o-meter can check how fine the grind is.
Conching follows roasting and grinding, and it is a long stirring and heating step that can last from three hours to three days, although longer is not always better. It drives off water, acid and harsh flavors, and it breaks cocoa solids and sugar crystals into tiny pieces, so the chocolate feels smooth in the mouth rather than gritty. The speed and temperature of conching strongly affect the quality of the final chocolate. Cocoa butter, the fat in cocoa beans, is pressed out of the liquor, and for chocolate candy some of it is mixed back in with the cocoa solids.
Federal rules in the United States set what can be called milk chocolate, and as of November 2026 these rules are quite specific: milk chocolate must have at least 10 percent chocolate liquor and at least 12 percent total milk solids. Milk chocolate in the U.S. must also have at least 3.39 percent milkfat by weight.
Cocoa butter can set in six different crystal forms, named I through VI, and only one of them, Form V, gives chocolate its shine and snap. Tempering is the step that aims for Form V: the chocolate is heated, cooled and reheated to exact temperatures so that most of the cocoa butter sets in that single form. Milk, dark and white chocolate are all tempered by the same methods, but at different temperatures. One method, seeding, stirs in chunks that are already tempered and carry Form V crystals for the rest of the chocolate to copy. After the cocoa mix is made, it is poured into molds, cooled, cut and wrapped, and the cooling takes time, at least 20 minutes to an hour.
Chocolate can still be spoiled after it has been tempered, in several different ways. Freshly tempered chocolate should not be chilled too soon, because putting it into a refrigerator or freezer encourages unstable crystal forms to grow, which spoils the shine and snap. Overheating spoils chocolate as well: heated too far, it loses flavor and gets more bitter. Chocolate that has gone pale or streaky is called bloomed, and bloomed chocolate always contains the most stable crystal form, Form VI, which Form V slowly turns into after several months at room temperature.
Controlling sugar crystals is the main skill in candy making, and cooks do it by stirring at certain moments and keeping the syrup at certain temperatures, so that the candy either grows crystals, like fudge, or stays glass-like, like hard candy. A hotter syrup makes a harder candy: caramels at firm ball; marshmallows, toffee, nougat and gummies at hard ball; and butterscotch and taffy at soft crack. Fudge is a crystalline candy because the cook brings sugar syrup to the soft ball stage, then cools and stirs it at the right time so that many tiny crystals form, which gives a smooth texture. Corn syrup and honey are added to some candies because they interfere with sugar crystals, and this keeps hard candy and caramel smooth instead of grainy.
Hard candy ingredients are simple: sugar, water and light corn syrup. The cook dissolves the sugar fully, stops stirring when it boils, and wipes down the pan sides so that stray crystals do not start growing. Hard crack syrup, the kind used for lollipops, is made without a crystal: it is amorphous, a glass, so the candy is hard and clear and snaps instead of crumbling. Rock candy is the opposite, because it is grown, not cooled fast, and slow cooling lets sugar molecules line up in a regular repeating pattern. Hard crack stage is 149 to 154 degrees Celsius (300 to 310 degrees Fahrenheit), so cooks use a candy thermometer and check it in boiling water first, because a thermometer that reads wrong ruins the batch. Without a thermometer, cooks drop a little syrup into cold water, and at hard crack the syrup forms threads and you may hear it crack. The syrup begins to set right away, so candy makers must work fast.
Gummy candy gets its chew from gelatin, a protein that comes from animals, which turns a sugary liquid into a soft gel, and the amount of gelatin sets how chewy a gummy is and how long it takes to dissolve in the mouth. Candy makers can tune both. Gelatin gels melt when warmed, which is why gummy candy melts in the mouth; gelatin is thermoreversible, so heating thins it and cooling sets it again. Gummy makers use more than one sugar, because sucrose gives the main sweetness while fructose, which is sweeter than sucrose, boosts the flavor, and corn syrup stops other sugars from forming crystals that would make the candy gritty. They also add acids such as citric, lactic and malic acid, which give sour flavor, balance the sweetness and change the acidity of the mix.
Mixing the ingredients for a batch of gummies takes one to three hours, and then the batch goes to a quality control lab before it is formed. The candy mix is poured into dents pressed in trays of starch, which keeps it from sticking. Making gummies the old way takes a lot of time and space, because the starch trays need about 24 hours to dry, sometimes 48, so factories need large rooms with controlled temperature and humidity. After the gummies set, a machine tips each tray over a vibrating screen to shake off the loose starch. That starch is reused: it is cleaned, dried with hot moving air and sent back to the machine, which is called a mogul.
Olmec people in what is now southern Mexico began growing cacao around 1500 B.C.E., and they likely used it for a ceremonial drink. In Europe, chocolate began as a bitter drink from the Americas, and Europeans made their own versions with cane sugar, cinnamon and other spices, while chocolate houses opened in big cities like London and Amsterdam. Chocolate reached Europe through Spain, although accounts disagree about exactly when. Chocolate was a drink for most of its history, and hard chocolate bars did not appear until 1847, which means that the solid bars most people know today are a fairly recent development in the long history of chocolate. Chocolate in the 1800s was still hard to chew, and early hard chocolate was less popular than the improved kinds sold today.
Cotton candy machines have a spinning bowl with tiny holes, and hot melted sugar flies out through the holes, cools in the air, and becomes thin threads. William Morrison, a dentist, worked with a candy maker named John C. Wharton on the first machine, in 1897, and the first machine was patented in the 1890s. Its makers called their cotton candy fairy floss and sold it at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair for 25 cents a box, where it was a big hit and about 68,000 boxes were sold. Germs in the mouth use sugar to make acid, and the acid can eat tiny holes in the tooth's outer layer, so brushing teeth twice a day with fluoride toothpaste helps protect them from the damage that sugar can cause.
A 2020 study funded by the US Department of Labor and carried out by NORC at the University of Chicago was the largest look yet at child labor in cocoa farming in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, and it estimated that about 1.56 million children were in cocoa-related child labor in 2018-19. About 95 percent of those children, roughly 1.48 million, were doing hazardous work. In 2018-19, about half of children in cocoa-growing households were in cocoa-related child labor, and over a third of children in Côte d'Ivoire and just over half in Ghana worked in cocoa cultivation. After the report, the World Cocoa Foundation, a group of cocoa and chocolate companies, said child labor remains a persistent challenge in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.
Words to know
- amorphous: without crystals
- tempering: heat and cool
- bloomed: pale, streaky
- anaerobic: without air
- conching: long stirring
