Arguably your most important post. A few thoughts from someone who mostly agrees:
* A lot of specific chocolates are more or less properly rated when discussed specifically - bad chocolate is bad, excellent chocolate is generally excellent. The problem is that as a flavor, chocolate is wildly overrated (especially, as you nod to, relative to fruit desserts), so when people see the word “chocolate”, without specifics as to the quality, they get blinded by the Hershey’s PR machine (I don’t know who runs it now, but I assume Hershey initially ran the PR push).
* Almost all chocolate can be improved with salt, and most salted chocolate is under salted. Dick Taylor does the best job of making their “with sea salt” product actually salty.
* You are entirely correct about vanilla, and I personally think the best vanilla ice cream is miles better than the best chocolate. Vanilla has the opposite problem - bad vanilla ice cream is just fine, which contributes to its reputation as the safe, boring choice. One thing I deeply miss from living in Texas is Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream, the best vanilla ice cream I’ve had that’s available in stores (even better, Strawberries & Homemade Vanilla, which is the perfect strawberry ice cream - vanilla, with strawberries).
I also think bacon improves chocolate, but mostly because it makes it saltier. I don’t find bacon to add much that couldn’t be added by properly salting (the bits are too small and the chocolate flavor tends to overwhelm the bacon flavor for me).
I'm inclined to agree on the chocolate take. I myself love chocolate but, partly due to efforts to reduce my sugar intake and partly due to an oversaturation of chocolate in the dessert world, these days I prefer to enjoy my chocolate a la carte, separate from other desserts, where I can actually enjoy the taste of good quality chocolate. Chocolate can be a good team player, but generally I find it to be really overdone and it smothers all other flavors. Kind of like bacon, now that I think about it (and with a similar cult following in our society).
Balance is seriously underrated in food generally, but desserts especially.
Omg THANK YOU! I live in Switzerland, and everyone assumes I am in paradise because of chocolate. But I don’t like chocolate! Now cheese, on the other hand . . .
Anecdotally, people's relationship to chocolate is gendered, isn't it? There are a population of people for whom chocolate truly is a transcendent experience, qualitatively, neurochemically different from other sweet foods, and they are disproportionately women.
Is this a uniquely American (or American-dominated-English-speaking-world) phenomenon? The fanciness of European chocolates would suggest it isn't, but I don't really have a good feel for it.
It would seem weird (or maybe the product of good marketing?) for this to be cross-cultural/cross-language.
To a lesser extent this is also an Australian phenomenon, and I think it's probably marketing-driven. I say this as someone who really likes good chocolate but also dislikes the chocoholic narrative.
I don't have strong feelings about chocolate (although I do hate bad chocolate, which is everywhere), but the bit about vanilla is spot-on. The degree with which people dunk on vanilla is just tragic.
I love creme brûlée, and flan. A top-4, Mount Rushmore ice cream flavor at the parlor down the street from me is their French Vanilla! It's a great flavor! Those of us who like it are neither children nor serial killers!
I like chocolate well enough, but the obsession with it on a cultural level is something I just don't get. Vanilla, as you say, is tremendously underrated (creme brulee is my choice over chocolate any day). So, in my view, is any kind of milk-based caramel. A bottle of high-end chocolate sauce isn't a danger to my health and waistline, where I cannot reasonably be trusted to moderate my intake of dulce de leche.
I generally agree. Really good vanilla is amazing, but it can be hard to find. But I gotta say the ethnobotany of cacao in Mesoamerica is fascinating. The (very odd) tree is native to Venezuela, but well-established pre-Columbus trading routes brought it as far north as Mexico City, where Aztec elites enjoyed drinking it. There were plantations in what is now Honduras.
During one of the later voyages of a son of Columbus, a trading bark was captured off the coast of Honduras loaded with cacao beans. The Spaniards didn't know what they were but commented that they must be valuable because when they dropped the beans on the deck, the natives would immediately pick them up and return them to their bags.
Chemically it's also interesting. It contains the mild stimulant theobromine. Remove one of its hydrogen atoms and replace it with a methyl (CH3) group and you get methyltheobromine, better known as caffeine. The downside is that chocolate has been discovered to be contaminated with lead and cadmium, two dangerous heavy metals. Dark chocolate is poisonous for dogs and other animals, and is a banned stimulant in horse racing.
Then there is the history of how cacao came to Europe, but that is another story. Most of what passes for chocolate in the U.S. is just chocolate-flavored candy and desserts. Ugh. Mostly I just eat Lindt 85 percent dark chocolate. I usually start my day with it, since I'm sensitive to caffeine and can't tolerate coffee. Dark chocolate is not a food, it's a drug.
My two cents: someone exclaiming how much they love chocolate is often just trying to convey that they love dessert/candy generally. Most desserts are chocolate, especially the desserts available to middle class and working class people.
"Eating ice cream full of caloric wax": I feel that way about nuts in ice cream. And I'm nuts about nuts. But frozen they are just unpleasant and pointless.
One of the best things I ever read was a history of the diamond business and the extremely sucessful, from-scratch marketing around it to associate diamonds with love and romance. Maybe those ad guys went and did the same to chocolate.
Unpopular opinion: the market has chocolate bars and cookies from Europe that seem to have more of a liqueur taste, less intense than American chocolate. I could be all wrong about this, but I *am* the Cookie Monster and I've learned to steer clear. Ordinary Lindt white chocolate - whatever that is - candy bar is better for baking, however, than most of what they'll have on the baking aisle - if for some reason you wish to melt white chocolate.
Unpopular opinion #2: while I've heard Hershey's* semisweet chocolate likened to "paraffin" - I like it. Maybe because it was the (sparing) chocolate of childhood. I don't care so much for Special Dark but Special Dark works fine for baking.
Agreed about one-note chocolate desserts being rather disappointing - one may as well just eat a really good piece of candy. There was a fad 20 years ago for "flourless chocolate cake" - once was enough to make that. I think I made Nigella's version with raspberries also; it was okay - "elegant" - but I didn't repeat it.
*Not sure who makes them but have you tried M&M's lately? Something weird going on there. I predict a big scandal.
Arguably your most important post. A few thoughts from someone who mostly agrees:
* A lot of specific chocolates are more or less properly rated when discussed specifically - bad chocolate is bad, excellent chocolate is generally excellent. The problem is that as a flavor, chocolate is wildly overrated (especially, as you nod to, relative to fruit desserts), so when people see the word “chocolate”, without specifics as to the quality, they get blinded by the Hershey’s PR machine (I don’t know who runs it now, but I assume Hershey initially ran the PR push).
* Almost all chocolate can be improved with salt, and most salted chocolate is under salted. Dick Taylor does the best job of making their “with sea salt” product actually salty.
* You are entirely correct about vanilla, and I personally think the best vanilla ice cream is miles better than the best chocolate. Vanilla has the opposite problem - bad vanilla ice cream is just fine, which contributes to its reputation as the safe, boring choice. One thing I deeply miss from living in Texas is Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream, the best vanilla ice cream I’ve had that’s available in stores (even better, Strawberries & Homemade Vanilla, which is the perfect strawberry ice cream - vanilla, with strawberries).
Yes about chocolate's unusual affinity for salt. Also bacon.
I also think bacon improves chocolate, but mostly because it makes it saltier. I don’t find bacon to add much that couldn’t be added by properly salting (the bits are too small and the chocolate flavor tends to overwhelm the bacon flavor for me).
I find it makes the chocolate better but the bacon worse. If you're going to mess with a good chunk of bacon, why not pour a little syrup on it?
'Sees title' <rubs hands> "Here we go!"
I like the chocolate take. I LOVE the vanilla take.
“The difference between me and so much of the public is that I do not fucking love chocolate.”
But do you fucking love mayonnaise?
I'm inclined to agree on the chocolate take. I myself love chocolate but, partly due to efforts to reduce my sugar intake and partly due to an oversaturation of chocolate in the dessert world, these days I prefer to enjoy my chocolate a la carte, separate from other desserts, where I can actually enjoy the taste of good quality chocolate. Chocolate can be a good team player, but generally I find it to be really overdone and it smothers all other flavors. Kind of like bacon, now that I think about it (and with a similar cult following in our society).
Balance is seriously underrated in food generally, but desserts especially.
Omg THANK YOU! I live in Switzerland, and everyone assumes I am in paradise because of chocolate. But I don’t like chocolate! Now cheese, on the other hand . . .
I'll be honest, I love your writing, but this is my favorite thing you have ever written.
And I don't always agree with you, but with this you are 100% on point.
Anecdotally, people's relationship to chocolate is gendered, isn't it? There are a population of people for whom chocolate truly is a transcendent experience, qualitatively, neurochemically different from other sweet foods, and they are disproportionately women.
Is this a uniquely American (or American-dominated-English-speaking-world) phenomenon? The fanciness of European chocolates would suggest it isn't, but I don't really have a good feel for it.
It would seem weird (or maybe the product of good marketing?) for this to be cross-cultural/cross-language.
To a lesser extent this is also an Australian phenomenon, and I think it's probably marketing-driven. I say this as someone who really likes good chocolate but also dislikes the chocoholic narrative.
I don't have strong feelings about chocolate (although I do hate bad chocolate, which is everywhere), but the bit about vanilla is spot-on. The degree with which people dunk on vanilla is just tragic.
I love creme brûlée, and flan. A top-4, Mount Rushmore ice cream flavor at the parlor down the street from me is their French Vanilla! It's a great flavor! Those of us who like it are neither children nor serial killers!
I don't even know where to start .... but proud to like chocolate ALOT.
If it's sweet and not chocolate, what's the point? (Someone has to stand up for chocolate insanity.)
I like chocolate well enough, but the obsession with it on a cultural level is something I just don't get. Vanilla, as you say, is tremendously underrated (creme brulee is my choice over chocolate any day). So, in my view, is any kind of milk-based caramel. A bottle of high-end chocolate sauce isn't a danger to my health and waistline, where I cannot reasonably be trusted to moderate my intake of dulce de leche.
I generally agree. Really good vanilla is amazing, but it can be hard to find. But I gotta say the ethnobotany of cacao in Mesoamerica is fascinating. The (very odd) tree is native to Venezuela, but well-established pre-Columbus trading routes brought it as far north as Mexico City, where Aztec elites enjoyed drinking it. There were plantations in what is now Honduras.
During one of the later voyages of a son of Columbus, a trading bark was captured off the coast of Honduras loaded with cacao beans. The Spaniards didn't know what they were but commented that they must be valuable because when they dropped the beans on the deck, the natives would immediately pick them up and return them to their bags.
Chemically it's also interesting. It contains the mild stimulant theobromine. Remove one of its hydrogen atoms and replace it with a methyl (CH3) group and you get methyltheobromine, better known as caffeine. The downside is that chocolate has been discovered to be contaminated with lead and cadmium, two dangerous heavy metals. Dark chocolate is poisonous for dogs and other animals, and is a banned stimulant in horse racing.
Then there is the history of how cacao came to Europe, but that is another story. Most of what passes for chocolate in the U.S. is just chocolate-flavored candy and desserts. Ugh. Mostly I just eat Lindt 85 percent dark chocolate. I usually start my day with it, since I'm sensitive to caffeine and can't tolerate coffee. Dark chocolate is not a food, it's a drug.
My two cents: someone exclaiming how much they love chocolate is often just trying to convey that they love dessert/candy generally. Most desserts are chocolate, especially the desserts available to middle class and working class people.
"Eating ice cream full of caloric wax": I feel that way about nuts in ice cream. And I'm nuts about nuts. But frozen they are just unpleasant and pointless.
One of the best things I ever read was a history of the diamond business and the extremely sucessful, from-scratch marketing around it to associate diamonds with love and romance. Maybe those ad guys went and did the same to chocolate.
Unpopular opinion: the market has chocolate bars and cookies from Europe that seem to have more of a liqueur taste, less intense than American chocolate. I could be all wrong about this, but I *am* the Cookie Monster and I've learned to steer clear. Ordinary Lindt white chocolate - whatever that is - candy bar is better for baking, however, than most of what they'll have on the baking aisle - if for some reason you wish to melt white chocolate.
Unpopular opinion #2: while I've heard Hershey's* semisweet chocolate likened to "paraffin" - I like it. Maybe because it was the (sparing) chocolate of childhood. I don't care so much for Special Dark but Special Dark works fine for baking.
Agreed about one-note chocolate desserts being rather disappointing - one may as well just eat a really good piece of candy. There was a fad 20 years ago for "flourless chocolate cake" - once was enough to make that. I think I made Nigella's version with raspberries also; it was okay - "elegant" - but I didn't repeat it.
*Not sure who makes them but have you tried M&M's lately? Something weird going on there. I predict a big scandal.