Who was the very first person to make ‘eating chocolate’?
18th century France produced pastilles (tablets) and bars, but it wasn’t until Bristol company Fry & Son made a ‘chocolate delicieux a manger’ in 1847 that the first bar of chocolate as we know it today appeared.
It was a mixture of cocoa powder and sugar with a little of the melted cocoa butter that had been extracted from the beans. The result was a bar that could be moulded. It might have been coarse and bitter by today’s standards, but it was still a revolution.
Moulded into blocks and bars, and poured over fruit-flavoured centres, this plain chocolate was a real breakthrough. But there was more to follow.
In 1875, a Swiss manufacturer called Daniel Peter added powdered milk to make the first milk chocolate bar.
It wasn’t a completely new idea – Cadbury produced their milk chocolate drink based on Sir Hans Sloane’s recipe between 1849 and 1875. And Cadbury added their own milk chocolate bars in 1897.
Cadbury Milk Chocolate in 1897 was a very coarse, dry eating chocolate, made by blending milk powder with cocoa, cocoa butter and sugar
But Daniel Peter was still way ahead of them – using condensed milk rather than powdered milk to produce a chocolate with a superior taste and texture. Another Swiss manufacturer had invented the conching machine in 1879. This refined chocolate, giving it the smooth texture we know today.
Swiss milk chocolate dominated the British market – a situation the Cadbury family set out to challenge in the 20th Century.
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