Chocolate Bar

HISTORY

Chocolate originally was just drunk. The first chocolate bar was created by JS Fry & Sons of Bristol, England in 1847. They had discovered a way to mix some of the melted cacao butter back into de-fatted, cocoa powder (along with sugar) to create a paste that could be pressed into a mold. It was sold to the public as chocolate delicieux a manger – delicious to eat.

Despite its bittersweet taste, Fry's chocolate bar was such a hit that people soon began to think of eating chocolate as much as drinking it.

During the 1860s, the Swiss chocolate manufacturer, Daniel Peter, tried repeatedly to create a chocolate bar flavoured with milk, to lessen the bittersweet taste, but he couldn't manage to produce a smooth mixture of milk and chocolate. The solution lay in Henri Nestlé’s sweetened condensed milk, which turned out to be perfect for Peter's purposes; the low water content made it possible to mix it with the pressed cocoa bean to create a chocolate bar that did  not spoil and was less bittersweet.  Peter and Nestlé amalgamated to form a company- Nestlé.

In 1900 The Hershey Chocolate Company introduced the first Hershey milk chocolate bar. It was priced cheap enough to make his chocolate bar an everyday item.

Cadburys introduced to the world their Dairy Milk chocolate bar in 1905.

In Bern, Switzerland, Theodor Tobler, the son of the chocolate-factory owner Jean Tobler and his cousin Emil Baumann created Toberlone in 1908. The name was a play on Tobler & “torrone”, Italian for honey-almond nougat. The shape was inspired by the Swiss mountain the Matterhorn.

The Milky Way chocolate bar was created in 1923. It was not named after the Milky Way galaxy but after a popular milkshake of the time.

Milton Hershey trademarked the "plume" extending out of the Hershey's Kisses chocolates wrapper in 1924.

Terry's Chocolate Orange was created by Terry's at the Chocolate Works factory in York, England in 1932. It came to life as the spin off of the much more successful Terry’s Chocolate Apple and Terry’s Chocolate Lemon. Both of the latter are now no longer made and the Orange variety is one of the best selling chocolates at Christmas.

In 1935 Rowntree’s launched their new two-bar wafer as Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp in Britain. Two years later it was rebranded as the Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp after the Kit-Kat Club an 18th century London political club named after Christopher (Kit) Catling who provided the venue.

During World War II Cadbury's was forced to remove Dairy Milk from shelves, as the government banned manufacturers from using fresh milk.

At one point during World War II, the Nazis plotted to assassinate Winston Churchill with an exploding bar of chocolate.

In early April 1947, literally overnight, the price of a standard bar of chocolate jumped 60 per cent, from five to eight cents in Canada. Across the country, disgruntled youngsters voiced their discontent and 200 kids marched and protested on the capitol building in Victoria, British Columbia, interrupting the provincial legislature. It is known as " The Candy Bar Strike".

A BBC analysis of 19 chocolate products between 2014 and 2018, revealed that 18 of them had shrunk in size. The worst hit by ‘shrinkflation’ in the study was a four-pack of Snickers, which reduced by 28.1%, from 232g to 167g

FUN CHOCOLATE BAR FACTS

The world’s largest chocolate bar weighed 5,792 kilograms (nearly six tons). The bar was made by Thorntons plc (UK) in Alfreton, Derbyshire, England on October 7, 2011.

Most of the chocolate bars in the Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory film are made of wood. However, the famous chocolate river is made from the real thing mixed with water and cream.

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

47 KitKats (the UK's favourite chocolate bar) are eaten every second in the UK.

Snickers, which is manufactured at the M&M/Mars plant alongside Metra’s Elgin-to-Chicago Milwaukee West Line tracks, was named after the Mars family’s favorite horse.

The chocolate bar known as "Milky Way" in the US is sold as "Mars" in the rest of the world, and the chocolate bar known as "Milky Way" outside the US is sold as "3 Musketeers" in the US. The 3 Musketeers bar was created by Mars, Inc., in 1932 as a competitor to the Milky Way bar. The 3 Musketeers bar is made with a lighter nougat filling than the Milky Way bar, and it is also coated in a thinner layer of chocolate.

A one ounce milk chocolate bar has 6 mg of caffeine.

25% of all Toblerone chocolate is sold at airports.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce