UW-Madison Professor of food engineering Richard Hartel announced that ""chocolate is the food of the gods"" during his talk about the science of the treat that has been around since 1500 B.C.
Hartel's presentation was part of UW-Madison's Wednesday Nite @ the Lab series, which features lectures in different areas of science.
Hartel explained the process that turns cocoa beans into the chocolate people eat, and said many factors influence the flavor.
The beans are fermented for five to seven days, which Hartel acknowledged as the most critical part of the process.
""This is where most of the flavor gets generated,"" he said.
Several other factors that determine the flavor include the way the beans are blended, the growing environment and where they originate. Cocoa trees grow in tropical climates within 15 degrees of the equator.
After fermentation, the beans are dried and roasted, like coffee beans. The inside of the bean is ground up into a paste, which generates chocolate liquor, or baker's chocolate. Cocoa powder is the other component, which comes from pressing the cocoa butter out.
Although the chocolate liquor is unsweetened, this is the portion used by Mayans and Aztecs in an assortment of beverages.
The smoothing of the chocolate occurs during the ""conching"" process. The high temperatures liquefy the chocolate and the cocoa butter crystallizes. Finally, the chocolate gets molded into a bar.
""It wasn't until the 1700s or so that chocolate and sugar got mixed,"" Hartel said.
The chocolate bar first came to be in 1847, when an English company that combined melted cocoa butter with sugar and cocoa powder.
Many attendees said they enjoyed the presentation, partly because Hartel passed out different samples of chocolate at various stages in the production process.
Chen-Ping Lin, a UW-Madison graduate student said she enjoyed the scientific aspect.
""I'm really interested in biological stuff,"" she said. ""I've been to some of the other science talks here and I liked this one a lot.""
""It doesn't have to do with my major,"" said Jacob Chan, a UW-Madison graduate student. ""But I decided to come anyway.""
The lab, according to Hartel, was a sweet success.
