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Post by Alan on Apr 28, 2006 17:43:31 GMT -5
Dear all,
We have talked about aging dark chocolate before and how the flavor improves with harsh qualities "mellowing" and the flavor becoming overall "rounded-out." Perhaps you can already see where I'm going with this?
It seems to me that every single book on chocolate that I've read mentions aging chocolate in one way or another, but there is not, in one single book, one clear explanation of what is really happening within the bar and why it affects taste positively.
Does anyone know of a book or article where the specific changes that occur within the chocolate bar over the space of a few weeks to a year are outlined clearly?
I would love to read about this. I am looking for more than the generalities mentioned in the first paragraph of this post. That is all I seem to be finding.
Thanks,
C-L
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Post by genehersey on Jan 15, 2022 22:35:21 GMT -5
This happens in all kinds of mixtures. I make sausage too, and the badder always needs to mellow for several hours once it is blended. Some call it curing, tho, it is a misnomer. I dont have a scientific explanation, but in sauces, casseroles, etc., time provides a blending of the flavors that nothing else lends. Some things even taste better after freezing…not chocolate haha
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Post by Sebastian on Jan 18, 2022 8:12:55 GMT -5
I don't know how much is publicly available with this - but theres a bunch of things occurring - and precisley what is happening changes with what type of ingredients you have, what your individual formulation is, and how they were processed - but that said - the main driver of change is entropy. First, the cocoa butter that crystallized is going to progressively convert to less energy - meaning your type 4 crystals will migrate to type 5, then 6, etc. As this happens, they pack more tightly togther and get harder - which obviously impacts texture. As time progresses - unless your chocolate is packed in hermetic packaging to trap in volatiles - those flavor components with a very low vapor pressure will simply boil off and evaporate. Clearly this changes flavor Also - when you mould your product - a good 40-60% of the cocoa butter in there is still liquid - even though your bar appears solid. Over time, that liquid cocoa butter will crystallize, using whatever the predominant form of the crystalline cocoa butter is adjacent to the liquid cocoa butter. The more solids you have, the denser/harder your bar will be. Then those recently crystallized components will follow the same pathway as noted above, and transition to the lowest energy crystal type over time. This can take a long time to complete. Since many of the flavor compounds are fat soluble - and since, over time, your fat both increasingly becomes solid as well as becomes harder - it requires more energy to release those flavors from that fat. While a portion of your flavor may have evaporated (depending on packaging), those non-volatile, fat based flavors are likely to become muted over time due to the changes in the fat matrix in which they reside.
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