Secrets of Chocolate

G'day, There's something wonderful about eating chocolate, isn't there? Of course it's the taste, but it's also the velvety mouthfeel you get when a good piece of chocolate melts in your mouth and coats your tongue. There's nothing quite like it.

If you've ever wondered why chocolate feels the way it does in your mouth, it's your lucky day. Researches in the north of England have uncovered the secrets of eating chocolate. And in true scientific fashion, they've managed to take something incredibly enjoyable--putting a piece of chocolate into your mouth--and make it sound sterile and vaguely creepy. Still, the findings are quite interesting.

Tests were done to study the interaction between saliva and cacao fat inside the mouth. These tests involved a professor of "colloids and surfaces" and an "artificial 3D tongue-like surface" (refer back to our "vaguely creepy" comment).

Studies found that as chocolate hits your tongue, the cacao fat melts and mingles with saliva to form the pleasant coating of your palate. While this has been known for some time, the interesting new information that came out of this study was the fact that fat molecules deeper inside the chocolate do not contribute to this mouthfeel. The magic happens as the outside of the chocolate touches your tastebuds. As you continue to chew, you'll get more chocolate flavour, but that special, velvety unctuousness won't be further affected.

This has interesting implications for the confectionary industry. And it could result in "next generation chocolate" where a "gradient-layered architecture" (their words, not ours, obviously) could be used when making chocolate. That is, the chocolate could be constructed with fat molecules on its exterior--giving eaters that sought-after self-indulging experience--while the interior could be made largely fat-free.