Milk chocolate is so rich and decadent – and with seemingly millions of uses and flavor combinations – that you might think it’s been around for a long time, but what we traditionally consider milk chocolate hasn’t even celebrated its 150th birthday! That’s right- milk chocolate, as we know it, was “invented” sometime in the late 1800s (historians disagree on the year) by Swiss chocolate maker, Daniel Peter.
The journey to chocolate milk wasn’t an easy one, and there were a lot of contributing players before and after Daniel Peter came onto the scene.
(TerriC / pixabay)
The Problem with Adding Milk
There’s a line in the iconic television show, Parks and Recreation, where the loveable goofball, Andy Dwyer, starts listing off all of his secrets. Among not knowing who Al Gore is and forgetting to brush his teeth for five weeks, he admitted, “When they say 2% milk, I don’t know what the other 98% is.” This statement is supposed to make you chuckle, but when it comes down to it – what exactly is in milk?
The percentages you read on the outside of the milk carton tell you how much fat is in each container of milk. Whole milk contains 3.7% fat, while 2%, 1%, and skim milk contain those respective amounts of fat. The rest of the milk is made up of other milk solids (carbohydrates, minerals, proteins, etc.) or water. The average container of milk is about 87% water, give or take a few percentage points dependent on how much milkfat is present.
It’s not that people didn’t try mixing milk into drinking chocolate – it’s just that it wouldn’t mix in very well. In fact, records show that Sir Hans Sloane brought back the idea of milk drinking chocolate from his trip to Jamaica in the last 1700s, and from that point on, adding milk to drinking chocolate started #trending in Europe.
The van Houten Legacy
In the early 1800s, Casparus and Coenraad van Houten, two Dutch chocolate makers, made one particular discovery that paved the way to milk chocolate coming about a half-century later. Before the van Houtens, whole cocoa beans were ground up prior to being incorporated into drinks or confections. This still produced some tasty results, but the problem was that there was so much cocoa butter in the cocoa beans that things didn’t fully mix since there was also so much water present in the milk. Drinking chocolate, for instance, often left a greasy residue behind because the fat from the cocoa butter would separate and rise to the top of the drink. Not necessarily a deal-breaker, but still slightly unpleasant (especially if you had a beard!).
The van Houtens created a hydraulic press that removed about half of the cocoa butter and left the chocolate maker with a block of cocoa powder that could be mixed successfully with sugar, milk, or additional cocoa butter. This invention was instrumental in helping bring about the chocolate bar and milk chocolate.
Daniel Peter’s Obsession
The van Houten press certainly helped the milk chocolate process along, but it wasn’t until Daniel Peter thought to combine milk powder with the rest of the ingredients that true milk chocolate came about. His neighbor at the time was a man named Nestlé (you might have heard of him), and Daniel Peter got the idea to add in milk that had some or all of the water removed, similar to Nestlé’s milk powder for babies.
It took a lot of trial and error on Daniel Peter’s part, but he eventually created a milk product that could be successfully added into the chocolate mixture. This idea proved wildly successful (and tasty!), but as innovative as it was, the chocolate still remained tough to chew and eat – a far cry from the silky-smooth goodness we enjoy today.
The Conche Machine
A few years later, Rudolf Lindt, a Swiss chocolatier, developed a new invention called dubbed “the conche” because it looked similar to a conch shell. Inside the machine, rollers work, grind, and aerate the melted chocolate for up to three days. The constant friction from the rollers smooths out and standardizes the cocoa, sugar, and milk particles, so the longer the chocolate is in the conche, the smoother and richer it becomes. Conching also eliminates excess moisture and some of the acids that can make milk chocolate hard to eat.
Chocolate Nowadays
Chocolate makers nowadays use a variety of different methods to add milk into their chocolate confections, and it’s not just limited to cow milk. Modern chocolatiers are also using goat milk, coconut milk, almond, and cashew milk (yes, there are even delicious vegan varieties of milk chocolate!) to help people of all backgrounds enjoy milk chocolate. When you factor in the endless add-ins (crispy rice, caramel, sea salt, nougat, raspberries, and nuts, to name a few), it’s a wonder we have time to eat anything else! So the next time you send out those care packages, be sure to send chocolate chip cookies that are loaded with your favorite milk chocolate chips.