Chocolate lovers might think that it would be difficult to improve on it, despite its hundreds of variations, however, there might be a way to make the bitter taste taste fruitier and more “flowery”.
A new study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, shows a way not yet explored to treat cocoa beans and offer them a unique flavor.
As you probably know, cocoa is the main ingredient in chocolate, and the beans grow on tropical evergreen trees, most often in the tropical areas of Central and South America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia.
To be more exact, the three most important producing countries of chocolate are Ivory Coast, Ghana and Ecuador, where farmers manually harvest cocoa beans.
The cocoa process to make chocolate
Once collected, the beans are covered with banana leaves (or sometimes with plastic) and left there for days to ferment. During this time, microbes in the environment break down the pulp surrounding the beans, chemically transforming them. This triggers biochemical changes in the beans, reducing bitterness and astringency while increasing pleasant flavors and aromas.
For years, studies have looked at the possibility of rebuilding the fermentation under in vitro conditions without the influence of microorganisms, incubating grains at controlled temperatures in solutions with adjusted pH.
However, the process was restricted to the use of cocoa beans fresh, so it had to take place on or near the farm site.
New process to change the flavor of the chocolate
Now, the researchers propose an alternative approach, called “wet incubation”. In contrast to the use of freshly extracted beans, they used dry, unfermented cacao nibs, which can be stored and transported to any place of production. The tips were rehydrated in an acid solution, heated for days, and then dried again.
Researchers at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences wanted to find out how the taste and aroma of chocolate changed comparing wet incubation with traditional fermentation. Although they already knew that both methods produced similar aromas, they hoped to better understand how they compare to each other.