Stuff Matters: Delicious
Some people say that eating chocolate is better than kissing. Studies have been conducted showing that the sensation of melting chocolate is far more intense and long lasting than the brain activity measured while a couple kissed. What is it about chocolate, that makes it so pleasurable to consume? What it is about chocolate, that allows it to go from a solid to a liquid?In the chapter Delicious, Midownik discusses the process, properties, and structures for one of the most popular food/flavors in the entire world, chocolate. Chocolate comes from small pods that grow on the trunk of the cocoa tree. Inside the pods are approximately 30 to 40 white, soft, large almond shaped seeds (also called beans). The beans are then harvested using machetes and then deposited in a heap on the ground where they are left to decompose, ferment, and heat up. This process keeps the cocoa beans from germinating into cocoa plants and also chemically
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chocolate is initially a solid when removed from the packaging but some how becomes a liquid as it melts into the mouth. Chocolate was not something that was created overnight. It took hundreds of years of culinary engineering efforts to create the most delicious, engineered material on the planet. The initial goal of chocolate manufacturers was to make a popular drink that could compete against coffee and tea. When they failed at doing so, the chocolate manufacturers came to the realisation that the real success would lie in chocolate becoming a liquid in the mouth rather than a saucepan. And thus the solid drink was born and named chocolate. Chocolate enters the mouth as a solid, absorbs the heat from the tongue and melts into a liquid of pure bliss. In order to achieve this, chocolate manufacturers had to have an understanding and control over cocoa butter