confectioner named Daniel Peter used the new dried milk powder produced by his countryman Henri Nestlé to make the first solid milk chocolate Not only do milk flavors blend well with chocolate, but the milk powder dilutes the strong chocolate flavor, and milk proteins reduce its astringency and make the taste milder Today, most chocolate is now consumed in the form of milk chocolate Then in 1878, a Swiss manufacturer named Rudolphe Lindt invented the conche, a machine which ground cacao beans, sugar, and milk powder slowly for hours and even days, and developed a much finer consistency than had been possible before This is the consistency that we now take for granted in even the most ordinary chocolates Having contributed so much to the evolution of modern chocolate, the Swiss are understandably the world’s champion chocolate eaters, and have been so for a long time At about an ounce/30 gm per day, Switzerland’s per capita consumption is nearly double that of the United States Making Chocolate The transformation of the fresh cacao bean into a finished chocolate is an intriguing collaboration between the tremendous potential of the natural world and human ingenuity at finding nourishment and pleasure in the most unpromising materials Right out of the pod, the bean is astringent, bitter, and essentially aroma-less Cacao farmers and chocolate manufacturers develop its potential in several distinct processing steps: Farmers ferment the mass of beans and pulp in order to generate the precursors to chocolate flavor Manufacturers roast the fermented beans to transform flavor precursors into ... Switzerland’s per capita consumption is nearly double that of the United States Making Chocolate The transformation of the fresh cacao bean into a finished chocolate is an intriguing collaboration between the tremendous... collaboration between the tremendous potential of the natural world and human ingenuity at finding nourishment and pleasure in the most unpromising materials Right out of the pod, the bean is astringent, bitter, and. .. essentially aroma-less Cacao farmers and chocolate manufacturers develop its potential in several distinct processing steps: Farmers ferment the mass of beans and pulp in order to generate the precursors to chocolate flavor